Turning point

So, just a warning, I think that this post will probably be a bit confusing as I just kind of spilled my thoughts. I also want to apologize in advance if I offend anyone's religious beliefs because that isn't my intention and I'm going to try not to talk about the actual beliefs here...
Anyway, I want to talk about the section that we read last night where Stephen hears the sermon about hell during his school's retreat. I was pretty surprised by how blunt and scary and terrible the description of hell was. This may not have been a new image to some people who were raised in a more religious way than I was, but, even back when I went to church every Sunday, I never encountered such a depressing depiction of hell. To be honest, while I was reading the sermon, my mouth slowly opened more and more and I just felt awful. Joyce, unfortunately, did a great job of really making the reader feel as though they were in the scene being described. However, it was easy for me to kind of move on after reading that passage as my beliefs don't really fit with that idea, but I felt awful for Stephen and the other boys, especially when Stephen threw up due to his fear and discomfort. Honestly, I wasn't very happy with the priest while I was reading that section, but I can overlook that because I think that, in the end, hearing that sermon had a really good effect on Stephen. It made me really excited to see Stephen feeling so good about himself, life, etc. after he confessed his sins. I've felt like there has been sort of an ominous cloud over Stephen's head throughout the novel that darkens as he gets older, but now that cloud is gone. I've been struggling a lot with my feelings about Stephen because I can relate to his feelings a lot of the time, but I think that he and I make decisions differently, so it has been a bit frustrating to read Portrait. Now that he seems to have cleared up some of his angst (not sure if that's the best word to describe it), I'm feeling a bit more optimistic about him. Obviously I can't know this already, but I feel like this sermon, as difficult as it was for Stephen to hear, will be a turning point for him and that makes me excited for Stephen and excited to read more of the novel.

starting off with some confusion

Welcome to my last first post on a blog in a Uni English class! Although I know it is obnoxious, I can't really contain my joy that I'm almost done with high school...so I apologize for my need to remind everyone of that basically all the time. Anyway, I really enjoyed the discussion about coming of age and what it means that we started in class on Friday. Like I said in class, I've started thinking a lot about coming of age over the past year and a half or so and it is kind of consuming me. The idea of coming of age is weird because it is supposed to be a period of transition, a time during which you change who you are as a person. We usually associate it with the teenage years, although the arbitrary ending point of this transition is becoming older and older. However, it never seems to get younger. No one (or at least I don't) thinks that middle schoolers or kindergarteners are coming of age, but aren't they transitioning, too? I remember in preschool and kindergarten, all I wanted was to watch the Disney princess movies. My parents never showed me "Bambi" or "Little Mermaid" or even "Cinderella." To be honest, I still haven't seen any of those movies. When I was that age, my thoughts were almost completely devoted to playing with my imaginary friend, Window, learning how to walk on the beam in gymnastics class, and mimicking whatever my older brother did. 5 years later, I knew Window wasn't real and had forgotten the fun we used to have together, I was considering quitting gymnastics, and my goal in life was to make sure my parents knew every single thing my brother did to annoy me. Clearly, I went through a big change during that time and came out with different likes and dislikes, new relationships, and a more realistic outlook on life. That is exactly the sort of change that is supposed to happen during the period of coming of age, and yet that transition during my childhood is not considered coming of age, and that kind of confuses me. I think it would be cool if I wrote a post at the end of this course that revisits the question of how coming of age is different than transitional periods of childhood and compared my ideas now to my ideas then. I anticipate that I will change a lot mentally and emotionally after reading and thinking about other people's coming of age stories, so stay tuned...

P.S. Sorry for the lack of capitalization in my title, but I wasn't sure if "with" and "off" were supposed to be capitalized or not, so I just didn't capitalize any of it... :)