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

A. Hemon’s Islands is the narrative of a young boys initiation into the adult world. The boy travels to a place he has never been before, far away from all the comforts of his childhood home. The island is full of secrets about the ‘adult world’ and the terrible things that can happen within it. While away, he learns shocking lessons about the world in which he lives, mainly from his Uncle Julius, who tells scary stories that he thinks the boy should know about. The boy is unprotected from everything on the island and everything it contains. Through this unprotected environment, he learns things about the adult world that are not learned anywhere else.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the car on the way to the coast, the boy almost loses his voice by singing â€Å"communist songs the entire journey.† (129) By his singing songs about â€Å"mournful mothers looking through graves for their dead sons† and â€Å"the revolution† the boy demonstrates his naivity. He is, after all, just a young boy. His limited life experience is shown in his singing such songs, without understanding the full meanings and connotations that those songs carry. The boys’ innocence is emphasized here, as these are ‘adult’ songs and it is only, generally, children who sing on car journeys until their voices are gone.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Even before boarding the boat, the boy begins to notice how ugly age and adulthood can be. He notices the â€Å"gnarled knees , the spreading sweat stains on their shirts and sagging wrinkles of fat on their thighs.† (129) At one point, he sees â€Å"one of the Germans, an old, bony man† get down on his knees and then vomit over the pier edge. The boy sees this, but still relates it back to something he understands. â€Å"The vomit Catherine Henderson hit the surface and then dispersed in different directions, like children running away to hide from the seeker.† (130) Again, by relating something so grotesque to something so childlike and innocent, the boy reminds the reader that he is still just a young child, not yet ready to deal with this kind of adult vision.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Once boarded on the boat and sailing to Mljet, the boy loses his hat. It is not just a 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 a â€Å"round straw hat with all the seven dwarfs painted on it.† (129) When the gust of