Girl in Landscape: A Must-Read Coming-of-Age Experience

I never read books ahead over the summer for English class because reading assignments are usually my favorite part of my homework, and I revel in discarding all other academic thoughts for a few precious hours each week and immersing myself in the plot of a completely new story. This was different. I had purchased the books on this class's reading list in early June and the moment I saw Jonathan Lethem's Girl in Landscape in the pile of all the other books, I was intrigued. Of course I know you aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but this one happened to be especially spectacular with these bizarre plants on the front. Also the title struck me with its simplicity that could mean so little or so much. So I read the back cover, promising a blend of a Western and Sci-Fi, and suddenly I was reading the book, unable to put it down for two days straight.

The book features this teenage girl Pella who settles in the frontiers of space with her father after her mother dies. It's cool because the scene feels a lot like a small-town western what-with the interactions between the people already living there, and yet the presence of Archbuilders, these mousy creatures native to the planet, gives the book a quirky Sci-Fi feel. 

I think what really appealed to me was how well Lethem was able to get into the mind of a girl on the brink of coming of age. I could fully relate to the feeling of being unable to speak up that Pella so often describes at the beginning of the book. Throughout the novel, she undergoes key changes that ultimately lead to her developing a voice with which she uses to defend what she believes in, and shape the future of the planet. The way in which she went from someone quiet and unable to speak for herself to a true leader made it a clear-cut coming-of-age novel, and I was really disappointed we didn't get to read it this semester because it was unlike anything else we've read. 

On top of being intensely engaging and relatable, it offered a really accurate depiction of a girl coming of age that I feel Housekeeping and The Bell Jar did not accomplish. Esther was just whacked, and that pretty much made her an outlier in her experiences, and Ruth barely opened up to her reader. Even though Pella was telling her story from all the way out in space, she was a very normal girl and her coming-of-age was well-defined, whereas I'm not even sure if Esther or Ruth ever came of age.I hope students who take this class in the future get to read Girl in Landscape because it was by far the best book on the reading list, although I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. 

Push-over Benji

Sag Harbor is drawing to a close and I've been asking myself whether Benji has undergone that magical transformation he was seeking at the beginning of the summer. He essentially wanted to go from "Benji" to "Ben," and come back to school being a little more cool. I thought that the episode with Melanie revealed Ben for just how young and uncertain he has remained.

First of all, Benji responds quickly to her attention even though he knows his friend is in a relationship with her, and he didn't initially have any interest in her. He really seems quite impressionable here, letting her steer the course of events without letting himself come through. A major part of coming-of-age is being able to stand on your own two feet and not be so swayed by the people around you. Unfortunately I haven't been getting much of that from Benji.

Another instance in which we witness Benji's lack of authority is when he can't be assertive about wearing goggles when playing with BB guns, or his discomfort with BB guns in general. He still feels pressured to go along with what everyone else is doing, and just as fate's cruel humor would have it, this lands Benji with a copper bullet lodged in his skull. This brings me back to Jason's conclusion at the end of Black Swan Green that "not giving a toss" is the whole trick to being confident. Benji clearly still buys way too much into what other people are thinking.

In the development of things with Melanie, I couldn't help but cringe when I saw the awkward way in which Benji brought her the ice cream and was instantly dismissed as she turned her attention toward Nick. He showed none of the suave poise he'd been seeking to achieve that would have aided him in handling the situation gracefully. Instead, he came off as more childish than ever, keeping his mouth shut and never confronting Melanie.

Although all this is very disappointing, I can only hope that these experiences will at the very least make him older and wiser, giving him lessons to grow from. Sometimes handling a situation badly molds the strength it takes to be prepared to handle a situation well in the future. With one chapter to go, I'm holding onto every last shred of optimism that something will finally click and give Benji a little more backbone.

Forging a Separate Identity

So far in the novel, we've watched Benji start to come of age as he's thrown into a setting resembling Lord of the Flies, in which there are no adults to monitor his and the other kids' actions, leaving them to make their own choices. This started a little before then, however, when he extricated himself from his younger brother Reggie.

Just like the bond between Lucile and Ruth at the beginning of Housekeeping, Reggie and Benji grow up so close to each other, they can barely be differentiated. In essence, there's nothing Benji can pinpoint about himself that makes him unique, which is by definition what he needs to develop an individual identity. He has a coming-of-age milestone when he holds hands with Liz on the ice rink and realizes what it's like to experience something on his own, apart from his brother. Quickly, the two seem to work harder than ever to prove that they aren't the same person.

When you're little, it's easy to slip into a pattern of always hanging out with the same person and losing yourself in the other's habits. I didn't have a sibling close enough in age for my experience to be the same, but I have always been super close with my mom. We've always done a lot of things together my whole life, and we can practically communicate telepathically. There's no doubt we have a great relationship, but when I was about twelve or so, I realized that I agreed with almost everything she thought and this perturbed me deeply. I needed to find away to distinguish myself to become my own person. This really hit me when I went to stay with my grandparents in France for the summer and I was without her for the longest I've ever been. I was speaking French, a language she doesn't speak since I learned it from my father, and I was experiencing so much without her. I came back different, having lived something she hadn't, and knowing myself all the better.

There's something about that moment in pre-adolescence when you realize what it's like to be you, on your own, without needing that other person to affirm what you're saying. In childhood, we're essentially mimicking our surroundings, trying to figure out how to act and what to think, and maybe what draws the true barrier between childhood and adulthood, is finding confidence in being yourself and coming up with your own assertions.