Paper Summary:

This paper explains that these maturation novels are a genre of literature called Bildungsroman, German for "formation novel", in which the main character usually is involved in a crisis and ends up recognizing his role in the world, a process that is usually typical of the maturation of the character throughout the story. The author points out that in these stories the process is an intellectual and moral growth: "The Open Boat", the growth is caused by experience, allowing the correspondent to finally feel the loss of the soldier through his comrade; "Flight", the growth takes place in the journey of a boy too eager to be a man; "The Gilded Six Bits" a full transformation from boy to man takes place as the character learns to deal with his emotions, feelings and responsibility; "The Boy Who was Almost a Man", the character never quite fully completes the maturity process, but the reader is taken through his bumpy ordeal. The paper concludes that all of these growths are very real and natural, leaving the reader with a new sense of understanding in this process of self-development and change.

From the Paper:

"In Wright's "The Man Who was Almost a Man," the journey of maturing into manhood is left unfinished. Dave Saunders, although thinking otherwise, never becomes a man. Dave sees men in the field one-day shooting, so he decides to purchase a gun. He associates the obtaining of a gun with becoming a man; to him the gun represents manhood. The pistol also has phallic connotation as well. After accidentally shooting the mule, Dave is not received by the other men around him, causing him to run away in search of acknowledgment somewhere else. He practices shooting, hesitant at first with his eyes closed and his head turned, he fires the pistol. It isn't until after he has fired the pistol that he realizes it wasn't as scary as he made it out to be. Once he overcomes this small hurdle he immediately feels he is a man."

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