First Love: The Narrator as the Adolescent-Adult - Essay Example

First Love: The Narrator as the Adolescent-Adult. Judith Oritz Cofer’s essay, “I Fell in Love, or My Hormones Awakened,” is an autobiographical account of ‘first love.’ The narrator is a fourteen year old High School freshman who falls in love with a senior. The boy is flattered by her adoration, and gives her a kiss – not as a gift of love, but as an egoistic, passing token of acknowledgement. This portrait of first love, and disappointment, is etched in such delicate lines of tenderness and poignancy that it tugs at the heartstrings. It is punctuated with snippets of humor and wit. Above all else, it is the persona of the narrator which invites empathy, and gives the story its appeal. The narrative voice is adolescent, but often reveals the undertones of the mature adult of the future. The character of the narrator is an endearing mix of adolescent self-consciousness and adult perceptiveness which charms the reader. The narrator shows the typical self-consciousness of the peer-centric adolescent, with all its uncertainties and complexes. Her low self-esteem makes her underestimate her worth. She identifies herself as was “a skinny Puerto Rican girl,” (681) who is very much outside the glorified orbit in which her rich, Italian, Marlon Brando look-alike moves. She is content to worship him from a distance, and has such a low sense of self-worth that she thinks herself to be “invisible” in her shadowing of her love. Her status is “nothing.” Her sense of inferiority make her love unequal: it is not a partnership of equals. She is a worshipper at the altar of her god. Her concession that he is beyond her reach is founded on her feeling of unworthiness. She is acutely self-conscious of her non-Caucasian ethnicity and her low economic status, as  "The poor little Puerto Rican girl."  She is pained by the fact that her peers arrive in cars, while she walks home with her father who, to compound matters, comes in his Navy uniform. This uniform assumes such horrific, attention-grabbing proportions in her psyche, that she calls it a glowing, “phosphorescent white.” Even as the narrator exhibits her adolescent persona, she reveals glimpses of adult perceptiveness and an acerbic wit. This dual characteristic is evident right from the title: the adolescent says “I Fell in Love,” while the adult states “My Hormones Awakened.” The narrator is perceptive in her observations: Greek drama is but a short-cut to Christianity; the senator in the play will be ridiculed; the nuns are ‘the Fates.’ The best example of this perceptiveness is her observation that “the main privilege of beauty is that others will do almost everything for you, including thinking” (681). She exhibits a keen resourcefulness in her plots to go to the supermarket. Once the pure idealism of her love has been shattered by the realization that the object of her love has used her only as an adjunct to his ego, she breaks out of the cocoon of adolescence and learns adult truths about love and heart-break. The voice becomes all-adult, with telling observations: “adulation leaves a scent;” the kiss was but “a trophy for his ego.” The narrator of “I Fell in Love, or My Hormones Awakened,” is an appealing persona. The adolescent voice narrates all the self-consciousness of the teenager: the importance of being perceived as ‘belonging’ to the group; the question of identity; the doubts about self-worth and esteem. This evokes sympathy in the reader. The adult voice adds a liberal dose of wit and perceptiveness. Both voices combine to portray a persona which invites empathy and makes the narrative a true “salute to life” and a compelling read. Read More