The Catholic Book Club discussion

0. If you have thoughts you want to share or points to discuss as you are reading, you can note them here.

Youth! That's what struck me at the end of the story. The entire book becomes a fight between youth and maturity. Right from the beginning with Hooper (embodying all the things CHarles hates about youth) to the end (where Charles has made peace with his feelings about Hooper) you've got all these young/mature demarcations.

- the struggle between Charles and his father
- Sebastian and his teddy bear
- Nanny Hawkins and her eternal preservation of them as children
- Cordelia as an actual child whose adulthood is at first rejected by Charles as "ugly"
- Lord Marchmain's childhood love of his wife compared to his adult hatred of her

Over and over, it's about stepping away from childish things and becoming what the world considers mature, or rejecting what the world considers maturity.