After our class today I was stricken by the similarities between Loraine and Ponyboy as young adult narrators. So I made this chart to symbolize the commonalities between all of our narrators so far. You could move the circles around and still manage to find common characteristics. So thus far in the semester, i think the similarities between all (or almost all) of our narrators include:

• High school age at some point in time throughout the story
• Lack of emotional connections with adults/ parents in their lives or an overall distrust for adults
• The importance of siblings (except for Lorraine)
• Relatable to some extent
• Coming of age morals/lessons learned
• Face some sort of problem- with the answer rarely made clear
• unreliable narrator or ironic voices
• Written by older authors (except for Angie and Ponyboy)- attempts at YA slang
• Holden, John, Ponyboy- presentation of masculinity
• Angie, Margret, Lorraine- perpetuating female gender roles
• Written around the 60’s
• Often writers or retrospectively re-telling their story, often readers

I would love to see the other connections you all draw between any of these characters; feel free to comment which circles you think could also overlap or as we read more narrators, where they might fit in this chart.