The Most Difficult Life Stage English Literature Essay

There are many stages in one's life, and the most considerable and difficult stage is adolescence. "Adolescence" is defined as: "the transitional period between childhood and adulthood in human development extending mainly over the teen years, also the process or state of growing to maturity and development as of a society, preceding maturity" ("Adolescence" Dictionary.com). In other words, adolescence is an intermediate stage with children emerging from immaturity to maturity. In the childhood stage, children follow parents by sharing their feelings and expressing their emotions to maintain parallelism and it makes parents easy to nurture their children. Conversely, in the adolescence stage, teenagers start to think themselves as individuals. They start creating their own world by keeping secrets, having relationships and making their decisions without their parents. Adolescents have various internal conflicts. In the meantime, it challenges parents to accept adolescents' sudden behavioral changes and parent their children in an appropriate way.

There are mainly three stages of adolescence, and each stage plays different roles for teenagers' maturity. The first adolescence development stage is usually experienced between the years 12 and 14, and this stage is called early adolescence. In this stage teenagers usually have confusion about who they are and where they belong. Teenagers start having biological and physical changes and most of time girls' body developments are earlier than boys. The middle stage of adolescence is approximately 14 and 17 years of age. During the middle adolescence, teenagers still experiencing change in bodies, and they start pay more attention to sexual development and appearances. The relationship with parents starts deteriorating, and they are easily feels lonely. The last part of the adolescent stage is generally between the years 17 and 19. The cognitive development occurs during the late adolescent stage, and teenagers act independently on making various decisions about their lives. In overall, physical change, emotional change, cognitive change and social behavior change are illustrated in adolescence period.

Adolescence stage plays the key period in one's life, the body companies with the most rapid and obvious growth. These body transformations often occur at the early adolescence and continue to the middle adolescent stage. The terminology for the particular body biological development for teenagers is called puberty. In the Oxford dictionary, "puberty" defines as "the period during which adolescents reach sexual maturity and become capable of reproduction" ("Puberty" Oxford Dictionary). The puberty is more focused on biological maturity, and it effects physical development of teenagers. These biological changes occurred in teenage girls and boys by increase feminine hormones and masculine hormones. For instance, teenage girls need to undergo with growth of breasts, hair and experience first menstrual periods. In the mean time, girls contain capability for having babies. In contrast, boys also have some distinguished biological change with increase testicles along with growing facial hair and having deeper voices. Also, the appearance and body shape change are revealed with biological change in teenagers' lives. The increase in hormones creates high speed of metabolism in one's body, so the rapid growth of height, weight body hair. For instance, girls start to grow underarm hair and increase weight especially around hips. These characteristic of developments of body images make girls look more attractive like women. For boys, there are growths on muscles and body shapes which are symbols of grown into manhood.

Along with important biological development, teenagers face emotional changes along with sensitive moods. "The transition period from childhood to adulthood not only leads to physical changes in the personality but also to physiological and emotional changes." (Pandey). Teenagers have unstable and sensitive emotions, like irritability, tension and uncertainty. For instance, the main character, Alice from the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, experiences sudden changes physically once she gets into the Wonderland. When she is puzzling about her physical transformers and her identity, she meets a Caterpillar under a tree. Once the Caterpillar sees Alice, he keeps asking about Alice's changes of physical sizes with "very short remarks" and contemptuous tone (Carroll 34). This question makes Alice feels irritated with the Caterpillar's contempt but also she puzzles about her transformations. In the end she turns away from the Caterpillar without a word. Alice represents most of adolescents during middle adolescence stage. Teenagers are sensitive and easily get irritated toward body transformations. Also, the physical maturity and biological development of hormones make teenagers easily have delusion of having relationship with opposite sex. They often feel nervous to fall into one-side love with opposite sex. In the story "Araby" the narrator is abbesses with his friend's sister Megan. "Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. […] This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood" (Joyce 12).The unnamed character has a romantic crush on Megan, and it reveals his passion and wistfulness of love. His heart starts beating when he sees him and he feels nervous to talk to her. This is an emotional change during adolescence. Teenagers are heighted passion and tension toward their secret lovers. The main character, Holden from the book The Catcher in the Rye, shows sensitive emotion and opinion about sex. "In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn't mind doing if the opportunity came up. […] The thing is, though, I don't like the idea. I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all […] Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God I don't" (Salinger 89). Holden reveals that he like having relationship with girls if occasion arises. However, in the mean time, he thinks sex "stinks" with some "crumby stuff." He is uncertain with experience sexual relationship with opposite sex. It is reasonable for teenagers to show high interest and uncertainty toward sex accompanied by increasing hormones during the adolescence stage. In short, teenagers' change emotions toward sensitive questions about their body metamorphoses and relationship with opposite sex.

Besides the emotional change, there are cognition changes toward knowledge. Most teenagers tend to develop knowledge from school, and increase their abilities to think methodically towards difficult questions and situations. It often occurs in one's early adolescence. "The cognition defines as the mental processes used by humans to acquire knowledge, and discovers problems logically. It most significant features is that the individuals now acquires the ability to process information in purely abstract terms" (Motepe). In the early adolescent stage, adolescents develop their minds by seeking knowledge and coping with difficulties by themselves. Teenagers tend to relate their problems or situation to their knowledge to help them to solve various problems. For instance, After Alice drops into the rabbit hole she starts wondering where she is. "'I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down I think-' (for you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the school-room […])-'yes, that's about the right distance-but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got?'" (Carroll 3) Alice tries to uses her school knowledge to understand her position on the earth. Even though, it seems inept making such statement, she shows improvement of using her knowledge. It represents most adolescents in early stage try to understand cognitive life theories by searching their limited knowledge. Teenagers are on track of strengthening intelligence by connecting difficulties with school knowledge. They value their intelligence and want to absorb more. So the education from school plays the most important role in growing one's cognition. However, Teenagers' perspective toward cognition of knowledge and school are easily shifted during middle and late stage. Unlike early adolescents, teenagers in middle or late stage think they are already grasped basic cognitive knowledge from school. It makes them start losing interests toward school. They start change their move the developing cognition toward freedom and personal desire. From Brook's "Araby" the unknown narrator shows his cognition toward personal desire. "I chafed against the work of school. […] I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play" (Joyce 13). The process of cognition of knowledge during late adolescence seems like childish play in narrator's point of view. These childish plays also become a barrier between the narrator and his desire of love. From Brook's poem "We real cool", it shows teenagers' rebel by describing their reactions toward school. "We real cool, Left school. We" (Brooks 35). These two simple lines show teenagers' indifference toward dropping school and the education become less important and useful. Instead, they tend to indulge their desire and freedom. In short, during the cognitive process, early adolescents tend to absorb knowledge from school, but later their cognition is toward desire and freedom.

As well as cognitive change, the change in one's social behavior displays during the stage of adolescence. "A major challenge for adolescents concerns their need to find their place in society and to gain a sense of fitting in that place" (Motepe). It is a challenge for teenagers to merge into the adult world. The communication is the most important role for teenagers to fit into adult world. Sometimes, their innocence and childish thought may lead them to an awkward or lonely situation which will cause teenagers' isolation lately. Alice tries to fit into the world in Wonderland which is the symbol for adult world. She tries to communicate with people in the Wonderland like other people. "Dinah's our cat I wish you could see her after the birds! Why, she'll eat a little bird as soon as look at it!" (Carroll 22). Alice is talking to a group of birds in a room, and she expressed her feeling in an inappropriate way. She does not mean to scare those birds out instead she just wants to share her feeling about her cat. Alice's inexperienced mind and innocence makes her have trouble fitting in socially. She becomes lonely again. Failed relationships with others make teenagers start disappointed to adults and isolate themselves. At the beginning of Brook's story "Araby", the narrator's brief description toward his neighborhood shows his isolation. "An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces" (Joyce 11). The word "detached" reveals the unknown narrator isolate himself mentally with people near him. From the narrator's point of view, the adult world is dark and heartless, because people are all carrying "brown and imperturbable" faces. Besides, Holden is another character who isolates himself during his adolescence stage. "The first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving somebody a buzz […] but as soon as I was inside, I couldn't think of anybody to call up. My brother D.B. was in Hollywood. My kid sister Phoebe […] was out. Then I thought of giving Jane Gallagher's mother a buzz […]. So I ended up not calling anybody. I came out of the booth, after about twenty minutes or so (Salinger 103)" This is inner conflict of Holden's isolation. He tries to reach out with people around him, like calling his friends or talking to cabdriver. However, in the end he left the booth without calling anyone. Adolescents like Holden are basically afraid of isolate with the world, but concurrently he repels to accept people.

Adolescence is the hardest stage for one's life. There are too many drastic life changes like physical, psychological and behavioral changes going on in one's life. It is easy for adolescents to get lost on their way in searching for the adult world by making mistakes. However, these changes are essential parts for teenagers' maturity. Hence, the family members and teachers should play the most important role to help adolescents. They should help teenagers understand their values in the society and trust their determination and respect their choices. Finally, they can establish correct life orientations.