Throughout this semester there has been one common ingredient in almost every piece that we as a class have read, and that is coming of age. Just as the May L. Becker quote in the title says, as we grow older we begin to find ourselves, this was true for the protagonist during our readings this semester. The idea of ​​coming of age or maturing as an individual has been presented in several ways. Some of these include O'Hara's philosophy that the mother lets her children find their own path, and Winterson shows the formation of her own ideas about the world. Lethem finds that growing up involves facing the truth, and Lowell has a similar coming-of-age story, except much later in life. Within the poem Ave Maria, coming of age is presented in a way that most do not consider. O'Hara tries to convince American mothers to let their children go out and discover the world's "darker joys" for themselves. His argument is to get them out of the house so “they won't know what you're doing.” If they go to the cinema two things can happen. One, they can go and for the cost of a quarter of a wat...