Maturity is a concept that may be hard to define but can be perceived in multiple ways. Being mature does not necessarily have an age, and it does not just happen overnight. Achieving a level of maturity depends on a person’s sense of responsibility, humility and wisdom. Being a mature person also includes having a sense of self and knowing who you are. Although some may see maturity as being serious rather than silly or an individual having the ability to act responsibly, the key to maturity is putting others before oneself and knowing the difference between what is right and wrong. Taken together, the film Lars and the Real Girl and T.C. Boyle’s story “Greasy Lake” illustrate this definition of maturity.
In general, it is believed that adults …show more content…
The boys consider themselves mature in the beginning, however, they are nineteen. This signifies the last year of their childhood and their second year of adulthood. In the beginning of the short story, the three young men are drinking gin mixed with fruity drinks. This is the first sign the author gives us of the boys acting childlike. If their goal was to portray tough, mature men, they would have had the gin straight, but they did not. The purpose of adding a fruity flavor on top is to take away from the bitterness, and that portrayed them as childlike. At two in the morning, they went out looking for danger in the narrator’s mother’s Bel Air. They ended up going to a local hangout spot, greasy lake. They met someone in the parking lot who they thought was an old friend and wanted to embarrass him. After finding out the man in the car was not a friend, rather a man out with girlfriend, they get into a fight and things begin to escalate quickly. The narrator ends up hitting the man in the car with a tire iron and knocks him out. When the woman comes out of the car, the boys start trying to attack her, but another car comes up and they all run and hide. At this point, the man and his girlfriend left and the three boys are left …show more content…
In Lars and the Real Girl, maturity was reached when you start doing what is right and put away childish things. When Lars asked Gus to tell him how he knew he became a man, Gus replied with you become a man “when you decide to do right, and not what's right for you, what's right for everyone (Lars and The Real Girl).” In “Greasy Lake”, maturity was considered reached when the characters know they are immature. The boys knew it was wrong to go to the party with the two girls who had asked them, and they turned them down. The setting of the story as it progresses also shows the evolution of maturity throughout the characters. According to Michael Walker, “[It] establishes this for us: the passage of the protagonist from water to land, and from night to morning, parallels his passage from ignorance to knowledge, from chaos to order, from naïveté to understanding”. Both “Greasy Lake” and Lars and the Real Girl illustrate the key concept to maturity which is, putting others before oneself and knowing the difference between what is right and
In general, it is believed that adults …show more content…
The boys consider themselves mature in the beginning, however, they are nineteen. This signifies the last year of their childhood and their second year of adulthood. In the beginning of the short story, the three young men are drinking gin mixed with fruity drinks. This is the first sign the author gives us of the boys acting childlike. If their goal was to portray tough, mature men, they would have had the gin straight, but they did not. The purpose of adding a fruity flavor on top is to take away from the bitterness, and that portrayed them as childlike. At two in the morning, they went out looking for danger in the narrator’s mother’s Bel Air. They ended up going to a local hangout spot, greasy lake. They met someone in the parking lot who they thought was an old friend and wanted to embarrass him. After finding out the man in the car was not a friend, rather a man out with girlfriend, they get into a fight and things begin to escalate quickly. The narrator ends up hitting the man in the car with a tire iron and knocks him out. When the woman comes out of the car, the boys start trying to attack her, but another car comes up and they all run and hide. At this point, the man and his girlfriend left and the three boys are left …show more content…
In Lars and the Real Girl, maturity was reached when you start doing what is right and put away childish things. When Lars asked Gus to tell him how he knew he became a man, Gus replied with you become a man “when you decide to do right, and not what's right for you, what's right for everyone (Lars and The Real Girl).” In “Greasy Lake”, maturity was considered reached when the characters know they are immature. The boys knew it was wrong to go to the party with the two girls who had asked them, and they turned them down. The setting of the story as it progresses also shows the evolution of maturity throughout the characters. According to Michael Walker, “[It] establishes this for us: the passage of the protagonist from water to land, and from night to morning, parallels his passage from ignorance to knowledge, from chaos to order, from naïveté to understanding”. Both “Greasy Lake” and Lars and the Real Girl illustrate the key concept to maturity which is, putting others before oneself and knowing the difference between what is right and