Coming of Age

Cindy Landa
English 102
College Essay
Karen Sutton
07/17/03



Coming of age is likened to the magical moment when a crawling infant-toddler begins to pull himself up from the floor, only to one day stand and crawl no more. No one can calculate when the “light finally turns on” and the “Aha!” is experienced. In both short stories “Doe Season,” written by David Michael Kaplan, and “The Secret Lion,” written by Alberto Alvaro Rios, the authors effectively use symbols and the setting to describe the maturation process and change during adolescence from childhood to adulthood.
First, each author chose a particular setting in which this change was about to occur. In “Doe Season,” a young, innocent girl named Andy changes and grows during a hunting tri...