To Depict A Child

We’ve read five different short stories now in college literature that all depict childhood. All of these take approach it in different ways and depict it with different meanings; although, some are more different than others. In The Sutton Pie Safe it depicts a child looking into the world of adults and not fully understanding what is happening in front of him. Every Little Hurricane shows how a child can take some big, rather nasty thing that is happening and put it into terms of what he can understand. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? depicts a teenager, Connie, instead of a child who sees herself as invincible until she meets an untimely demise at the hands of Arnold Friend. Bottle Caps was an extremely short story that reminds us all of a child’s tendency to collect things and younger sibling’s tendency to mess with an older sibling’s stuff. For Esme – with Love and Squalor was a rather strange short story about childhood, which unlike the others was told from the perspective of an adult; in the little girl Esme we find a child’s ability to adapt to adverse situations (In her case her parents dying) and grow up quickly if it is necessary. I think all of these things can be part of childhood if your circumstances are right; however, for some people they may not be a part of childhood at all.

As for something else that depicts childhood in an interesting manner I think the movie “The Goonies” might be a good example of this. This movie seems to say good things about childhood—things like children are brave, adventurous, and want to help others (in this case their friends and family). The Goonies is a story of childhood adventure, a hunt for pirate treasure. While it is depicted in the movie as being real similar things can often occur due to many children’s fantastic ability to make anything they do interesting or an adventure. I mean, seriously, who hasn’t been pretend treasure hunting? I think this story is similar to Bottle Caps because of the treasure hunting aspect although in Bottle Caps the treasure was bottle caps. And perhaps it is also similar to Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?  because of the group encountering evil bad-guys similar to Arnold Friend; however, their bad guys weren’t creepy rapists and the children in The Goonies beat their bad guy unlike Connie.