How Do You Know When You Be Me Being You Analysis

In the video “How Do You Know When You’re A Grown-Up?” by The Atlantic, the novel Me Being Me is Exactly as Insane as You Being You by Todd Hasak-Lowy, and the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles shoe that coming of age can not be condensed into one single ceremony or experience, that it must be an individual experience apart from anyone else's, and that it must all lead to an understanding of the responsibilities of adulthood, which may result in a loss of innocence.

Contrary to many popular traditions, it is impossible to encapsulate the entire process of coming of age into one single experience. In the video “How Do You Know When You’re A Grown Up?” an interviewer asks a variety of people about how one would know when they were a grown
Todd Hasak-Lowy makes it very clear in his novel, Me Being Me is Exactly as Insane as You Being You, that his main character Darren, does not come of age like anyone else. In short, Darren travels to Ann Arbor from Chicago to visit his brother, Nick in college in an act of rebellion in which he is attempting to assert his maturity, which ultimately makes Darren look rather foolish. However, the important part of this journey is not in the tales of awkward beer drinking and getting stoned in a random dorm room, it is in Darren’s company, his friend Zoey. Zoey accompanies Darren to Ann Arbor and disappears soon after their return to Chicago and does not tell Darren why. After some investigation, Darren finds that Zoey has been to sent off to some sort of recuperation facility in New Mexico. Darren asks a Grace, a close friend of Zoey’s why she had been sent there, “ “She’s just Zoey,” Grace said, sounding almost relaxed all of the sudden. “She’s complicated, okay? That’s it. Everyone’s always telling her what she is.” … “She’s Zoey, that’s all.” ” (394). Zoey has been forced to grow up more quickly than anyone would have liked due to some physiological conditions, which becomes clear to Darren now that she has been sent away. Both traveling to Ann Arbor and knowing Zoey are occurrences that are essential to Darren's coming of age. Darren’s coming of age, though there may be some
In the novel, Finny, the best friend of the main character, Gene, acts a symbol of Gene’s innocence after Finny falls from a tree and becomes disabled, as he can now no longer come of age as the rest of the boys at their school can, by going to war. By the end of the novel, Finny reveals that he want to go to war, even though he knows that he cannot, “ “I’ll hate it anywhere if I’m not in the war! Why do you think I kept saying there wasn’t any war all winter?” ” (190). Soon after revealing this to Gene, Finny dies in surgery. At this point, Gene falls away from the fantasy world of innocence that is created while Finny is alive. Once Finny dies, Gene the funeral is both for Finny and Gene’s innocence, “I could not escape the feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.” (194). After losing his innocence, Gene moves on and goes to war. Finny’s death is essential to Gene’s coming of age because after Finny is gone, Gene accepts that he must escape innocence and move forward into his adult life, which is essential in any coming of