Islands As A Narration Of A Yo :: essays research papers

A. Hemons Islands is the narrative of a young boys initiation into the adult world. The boy travels to a place he has neer been before, far away from all thecomforts of his childhood home. The island is full of secrets about the adult world andthe terrible things t assume put up happen within it. While away, he learns shocking lessonsabout the world in which he lives, mainly from his Uncle Julius, who tells scary storiesthat he thinks the boy should know about. The boy is vulnerable from everything onthe island and everything it contains. Through this unprotected environment, he learnsthings about the adult world that are not learned anywhere else.In the car on the way to the coast, the boy almost loses his phonation by singingcommunist songs the entire journey. (129) By his singing songs about mournfulmothers looking through graves for their dead sons and the revolution the boydemonstrates his naivity. He is, after all, just a young boy. His limited life experience isshown in his singing such songs, without understanding the full meanings andconnotations that those songs carry. The boys innocence is emphasized here, as theseare adult songs and it is only, generally, children who sing on car journeys until theirvoices are gone. Even before boarding the boat, the boy begins to notice how ugly age and adulthood can be. He notices the gnarled knees , the spreading sweat stains on theirshirts and sagging wrinkles of fat on their thighs. (129) At one point, he sees one ofthe Germans, an old, bony man have got down on his knees and hence vomit over the pieredge. The boy sees this, but still relates it back to something he understands. The vomit Catherine Hendersonhit the surface and then dispersed in different directions, like children running away tohide from the seeker. (130) Again, by relating something so grotesque to something sochildlike and innocent, the boy reminds the reader that he is still just a young child, notyet ready to deal with this kind of adult vision.Once boarded on the boat and sailing to Mljet, the boy loses his hat. It is not justa hat though, it is his hat that shielded him from the grown-ups and the adult way of life. If he wanted to look at them properly, he had to raise his head. The hat was around straw hat with all the seven dwarfs painted on it. (129) When the gust of