Jason's First Kiss

I think that a lot of people often consider their first kiss a milestone in their coming of age, so it is really fitting that one of the last scenes in Black Swan Green includes Jason’s first kiss.

Compared to other books we have read, Jason’s coming of age seems a lot more like the stereotypical one that I think of when thinking about coming of age. He goes to school, gets bullied, has some family struggles, has his first kiss, etc. In Housekeeping, for example, Ruth doesn’t interact with any other kids at all or at least it isn’t focused on in the novel. Esther in the Bell Jar is in school in the beginning of the book, but doesn’t really talk about her experience in depth. Black Swan Green reminds me the most of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Catcher in the Rye because they are all about young boys in school who go through bullying at some point. The first kiss scene, however, is unique to Black Swan Green but goes along with the sexual awakening themes in many coming of ages. The other novel that first comes to mind when thinking of this is when Esther has sex for the first time in The Bell Jar, but that sexual awakening was in a very different context than Jason’s first kiss.

Overall, I thought that it was a really sweet scene. Especially after the pretty rough chapters before with Jason being bullied and stealing the wallet, this scene was a nice way to bring things back to a more positive note. It felt fitting for it to be at the end of the book because Jason had matured a lot and this was a kind of indication of that maturing throughout the year he had.