The Persistent Need to Fit-In
The life of a thirteen-year-old boy living in 1980s Black Swan Green is a never-ending performance. Adherence to unspoken social rules is a huge theme in Jason Taylor’s narrative, which is evident from the very beginning of the novel, when he refuses to wear his black parka and woolly hat because “black means you fancy yourself as a hard-knock,” and “woolly hats’re gay” (5). Because of this, the reader gets to know Jason’s two different personas: the public/social Jason, who likes games like British Bulldogs and smoking cigarettes, and the private Jason, who writes poetry and gets book tokens for Christmas. In many ways, Jason’s self-suppression in social settings can be dismissed as temporary, a natural part of coming of age and trying to find one’s identity. Jason himself uses this same argument when attempting to justify his use of the pseudonym “Eliot Bolivar” in his poems to Madame Crommelynck: “I’m a kid. I’m thirteen. You said it’s a ...