Paper 1 analyzes the human metamorphosis from innocence to experience.
In Louise Glück’s “The Myth of Innocence,” she uses the story of Persephone and Hades to explore what it means to gain and lose the dreams of childhood. Within the lines of her work, Glück invokes several major themes including love, disappointment, dreams for the future, and what it means to go from childhood to adulthood.
This bittersweet coming of age story is about a young girl haunted by the awareness that her uncle, Hades, god of the underworld, is watching her. Hades kidnaps her and irrevocably alters her life, swooping her away to live with him in the underworld. Later, she returns to the last place where she was innocent, young, simple, and tries to make sense of her life.
On page 182, Gluck writes “But ignorance / cannot will knowledge. Ignorance/wills something imagined, which it believes exists.”
A similar picture of the journey from innocence to adulthood is described in “Half a Day” by Naguib Mahfouz, who also focuses on the speed in which it begins and ends along with the accelerated pace of modern life.
Indeed, for both authors, coming of age and the loss of childhood innocence are irreversible, disenfranchising, and fuel feelings of aloneness.
PROMPT: To what extent is the vision given in Glück’s “The Myth of Innocence” and the argument voiced in Mahfouz’s “Half a Day” applicable to our modern passage from innocence to experience?
