On Youth

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how youth represents belief in the possibilities in life. WIthout his youth to allow him to dream, Amory wonders from pursuit to pursuit, living off his meager income and truly achieving nothing. His life has essentially changed from one of the unusual and extraordinary to one of the humdrum and mundane. This portrayal of youth is in striking contrast to the way Slouching Towards Bethlehem portrayed youth. In This Side of Paradise youth is something that is inevitably lost as we grow up and come to grips with our own limitations. It is portrayed as something that we have to accept. In contrast, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, youth can be maintained throughout one’s life in the form of a continued search for a better, more meaningful life.

A third alternative view of youth can be found in Dandelion Wine. In this novel by Ray Bradbury, youth is shown, not as something that is suddenly lost over time or maintained throughout one’s life, but as something that fades with age and is replaced with contentment and acceptance. In Dandelion Wine several generations and age groups are portrayed. The first is the youngest generation, the generation that still maintains it’s youth. For Douglas Spalding, a twelve year old boy and the main protagonist in the book, the summer is a time for him to explore his youth and revel in wonder at the world around him. “Douglas opened one eye. And everything, absolutely everything, was there. The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him. And he knew what it was that had leaped upon him to stay and would not run away now. ‘I’m alive, he thought.”(9) Douglas spends the rest of the summer coming to grips with what it truly means to be alive. His fears and sadness and excitement and triumphs are all vivid with new possibilities and experiences. The next generation is the generation who is going through middle age. For characters such as Douglas’s mother and Mr and Mrs. Auffmann, youth has begun to fade. Yet unlike in This Side of Paradise this change doesn’t cause despair and resentment. Instead it is replaced with a sense of contentment. When Mr. Auffmann attempts to relive the feelings of youth by building a Happiness Machine his wife replies, “Something’s wrong?” (36). The adults in Dandelion Wine are happy with their lives and see no reason to want for more. The third generation is the one that is now coming to the end of its life. These senior citizens see life through a wise and experienced lense and accept the processes of life. This is the case with Helen Loomis. When she is visited by William Forrester, a young man who claims he was in love with her once, they talk a lot about life. “It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?” (142). There is no bitterness or resentment in her as she says this, as if she was stating a well known fact. Her recognition of the way that the world works is indicative of how the rest of her generation has come to view it. Unlike Slouching Towards Bethlehem, youth still fades when one grows up, but it doesn’t leave as much destruction in its wake as it does in This Side of Paradise.

Youth is portrayed very differently throughout the three novels. In Slouching Towards Bethlehem youth is an approach to life, a life filled with hope and belief in the advancement of the world. However in This Side of Paradise youth is something that is ripped away and replaced with a disenchantment about the world and one’s own prospects. Finally, in Dandelion Wine youth is still a period of time is one’s life that is

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lost, but the loss is more gradual and much less tragic. Instead the wonder is replaced with other emotions as life continues on into adulthood. In reality all of these meaning of youth are experienced. For some youth and it’s filter on the world continues for much of, if not all of their lives. For others their youth ends quickly or is violently ripped from them, leaving them in a state of shock. And for some people youth fades like the sunset and they find new ways to make meaning in their lives. Youth is universal in that we all experience it, but it defines us as far as what happens next.