The age of Innocence

If you want to be a man
You must kill a boy

-Daniel Ritcher

I've always felt strongly for the role of a child in any story. Children symbolize innocence and childish abandonment, something that is brutally stripped away as the realities of this world inflict themselves on maturing adults.

Maturity- it is a word spoken with awe and longing. Maybe not so much of awe, but it is what every child aspires, so that their words will be heeded at last, their status in this world affirmed. And yet that word symbolises an awakening from a fair and just world, where parents teach the qualities of morality, into a world rife with corruption and unfairness.

Do you want to grow up then? I don't, at least, i hope never to step out of the protection of my safe home. Humans are not perfect, sin is abundant in this world. Is it wrong to yearn for a place where wrong is punished and righteousness rewarded? What are the consequences of that, since humans are imperfect and seek to hide from their sin?

Perhaps that is why i admire a child. A child does not have such questions- a child assumes fairness and justice in this world. Is that why i am particularly afraid of horror stories which feature children. I must confess, they scare me more than other 'ghostly' apparitions, those of children. The notion of a disillusioned, knowing child is fearful and yet intriguing. That is why i like reading stories with child seers, i suppose. It is always facinating to realise what children are capable of, and why adults assume them unknowing.