Do you remember inventing characters for yourself as a little kid? I remember that when I was six or seven I loved Star Trek games. I would pretend to be the captain of a huge starship (cardboard box) and I would zoom across galaxies (backyard) in search of new universes (garden bushes) and alien species (my sister). It was fun to pretend that I could bravely traverse space, even though I wasn't yet courageous enough to sleep without a night light.
I think these kinds of games are essential to kids as they grow up. Pretending to be a fearless intergalactic explorer or a badass superhero helps kids build the self-confidence they need to get through childhood. This kind of confidence is especially important during adolescence because young people must learn a balance between their personal identity and the values they've been taught.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about how my own childhood games compare to Stephen's. His imagination produces characters and scenes that are very different from the fantasies I imagined as a kid. At the tender age of six, Stephen imagines himself having a tragic illness that leads to his early death. He plans out his entire funeral service while recovering from a minor fever. When he's older, Stephen begins to think of himself as a brooding and mysterious poet who has suffered through a lifetime of heartbreak. He envisions himself as a tortured Byronic hero, the protagonist of a romance novel gone wrong.
Stephen's "childhood games" don't seem to prepare him for growing up and developing a sense of self. Instead, his imagination pushes him further from his family and the real world around him. I understand that adolescence can be an alienating time, but this is especially true in Stephen's case. Part of his "tortured artist" persona means that he sees himself as superior to other kids and even adults in his life. Rather than his childhood games forming a basis for personal growth, Stephen's weird imagination makes him isolated and narcissistic.
I agree, I think Stephen's currently mentality isn't exactly setting him up for healthy relationships and self-confidence later in life. But I wouldn't exactly put the blame on him, you know? Maybe it's his surroundings that make him the way he is, like he doesn't really have the emotional support from his family or he doesn't really play with his siblings. I feel bad for Stephen, because I think the idea of the "tortured artist" is getting perpetuated and he's not going to be able to have healthy relationships as you said.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Stephen might not be exactly what we would consider the "norm" for children in terms of imagination, but I also think his fantasies stem from something very common among children. It seems to me like Stephen is craving validation and attention, and his fantasies are what carry that out for him. In that way, I think the way he develops makes a lot of sad sense, though I hope going forward he will find more healthy (and slightly less vexing) ways to find acceptance and validation for himself.
ReplyDeleteStephen really takes his games to the next level. I remember as a child being kind of curious about death. It was something I didn't really understand but wanted to learn more about it. I remember asking my mom a lot of questions about how death worked and what happens after you die. But death was never the focus of my childhood games. And the way Stephen thinks about death is definitely very different from normal childhood games. I feel like his imagination is heavily affected by the Catholic church and as you said, this may have caused some negative affects on his personality.
ReplyDeleteStephen is a very melodramatic kid. Not to generalize here, but I think that may be true of most artist types. Stephen is a theater major stuck in a child's body. I agree that it's kind of weird that he developed this way, and maybe it's the church's emphasis on shame and torture that Stephen adopts for himself.
ReplyDeleteI think that growing up in the Catholic faith takes a large toll on the way a young child's brain works and develops, and we can tell that it affected Stephen's imagination. Every other sermon is about the afterlife, and Stephen recalls that he learned to torture himself on earth so as to not suffer in heaven. Those types of ideas probably were repeated from an early age, so since that's all he heard about, that's probably the first thing his mind leads him to think. Kind of sad, really.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm
ReplyDeleteSea Monster lmao