underage hero(ine)s

I recently had a conversation with a friend about the top three characters in literature we each identified with and felt sheepish to report that mine were Holden Caulfeld from Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Scout Finch from To Catch a Mockingbird, and more recently, from George R.R. Martin's Fire and Ice Series, Arya Stark.  I was dismayed initially to realize my heroes were all kids.  It wasn't until I recognized that they had each been given, more or less, the responsibility of figuring out situations that were a bit beyond them, that I understood my connection to them.

Although I share (at least a little) Holden's wry mockery about sharing too much about a "lousy childhood and all that David Copperfield kind of crap," as a coach, I take comfort in the idea that we should all have some characteristics of these underage heroes, regardless of the realities or hardships of our younger selves. If we're growing, we're questing. We're trying to figure things out, we're trying to assess a world that is bigger than we are, and we're asking the hard questions. We're taking a look at the norms of our overlapping roles and wondering if they make sense at all and how they make sense for us. We're also aware that we're tenaciously (in Arya's case), curiously (in Scout's) or even resistingly (in Holden's) taking on the next steps of, in their respective cases, adult awareness and responsibilities. Maybe in our modern day world, it's a promotion, or any role that we feel as-yet ill-equipped to handle, or maybe we're simply casting a keen eye on a situation that could benefit from a little naive-but-shrewd probing.

Even as I write this, it occurs to me how much I love Frannie Nolan from Maggie Smith's timeless A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Her observations about the world she is growing up in, her capacity to see beauty in her somewhat grubby surroundings, and her willingness to walk into her future wide-eyed move me tremendously. And Ender! Orson Scott Card's little hero from Ender's Game will grab you by the throat with his resolute capacity for leadership under duress.

I refuse to think that my identification with these kids is about nothing other than a desire to stay in a constant state of willing not-knowing, which is immensely more powerful than having it all figured out.