Final Reading Response

Inquiry Question: what did Isabel learn during this experience and how did it contribute to her coming of age?

            Many teens and even adults go through many things to become more mature. In the book, “We’ll Always Have Summer” by Jenny Han, Isabel’s coming of age experience was pretty confusing. She learned many things and experienced many things. Isabel fell in love with two brothers, Conrad and Jeremiah. They both loved her back. Isabel first dated Conrad, they then broke up and she started to date Jeremiah. While she dated Jeremiah, at the bottom of her heart she still had feelings for Conrad. Jeremiah proposed to Isabel out of the blue and she said yes. This decision really contributed to her coming of age experience, because she later regretted this decision and learned a lesson. Always think about your decisions fully and make sure you don’t just make them to try to prove something, make them because you actually want something. This contributed to her coming of age because she became more mature and she grew mentally.

            Isabel decided to marry Jeremiah out of the blue when at the bottom of her heart she knew she still had feelings for Conrad. She also knew that Jeremiah only proposed to her because she was mad at him and she was thinking of breaking up with him, this was his way of saying sorry to her. She said yes, at that moment she was deeply in love with Jeremiah. She later realized that it was all a mistake and she was marrying him for the wrong reason. “Sometimes I wondered if we had rushed into getting married because we were both trying to prove something to the other and maybe even to ourselves” (Han 287). She realized that her love for Jeremiah wasn’t as strong as her love for Conrad. She realized that it wasn’t her and Jeremiah, but she and Conrad were meant to be. At the end of the book she talks about Jeremiah, “It, we, just weren’t meant to be” (Han 287).

            This decision and whole experience contributed to her coming of age because not only did she become more mature but she grew mentally by learning many things. She learned that sometimes you have to live with things that you don’t want and you may think that you will always have people to guide you through your life but you have to learn to live alone and be able to guide yourself. When she decided to marry Jeremiah, her mom didn’t approve. She stopped talking to her, whenever they saw each other they would have and argument, and her mother even said that she wasn’t going to the wedding. This devastated Isabel but while she and her mother were mad at each other she learned that she could live without her mother guiding her and watching her every step. Her mother said, “I already gave you my answer. No, I won’t be there” (Han 134). This made Isabel very sad and she decided to leave her house and her mom. She made this decision and learned how to live on her own.

            All in all, Isabel learned may things during this experience that contributed to her coming of age. She made decisions that she later regretted and decisions that in her heart she knew were right. Isabel ended up with Conrad because they were meant to be.

WORKS CITED
Han, Jenny. We'll Always Have Summer.  New York City: Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing Division, 2011. 287 and 134 out of 287