From a Boy to an Adult

Alistair MacLeod’s “To Every Thing There Is a Season” is an exemplary illustration of an initiation or coming of age story. MacLeod effectively portrays the confusing feelings that accompany the narrator’s sudden and abrupt transition from the magical world of being a child into the harsher reality of adulthood. MacLeod uses an extraordinary amount of symbols and imagery to depict this.
The story begins with an introduction to an eleven-year-old boy, caught between being a child and becoming an adult. His childlike innocence is fading. MacLeod uses the symbol of snowflakes to illustrate the pureness of the child. “The large flakes were soft and new then and almost generous, and the earth to which they fell was still warm . . . they disappeared at the moment of contact” (MacLeod, 209-210). “When we turned to leave, it fell upon our footprints, and as the night wore on obliterated them and all the records of our movements” (MacLeod, 210). The disappearance of the ...