Sacrificing Innocence

We all see childhood innocence as a beautiful thing. Children cannot grasp certain ideas like death and live in a world where Santa Claus and the tooth fairy exist. Even the word "innocence" itself sounds so pure. Maybe this is why parents try to hold on to their kids' innocence for so long. They attempt to shield them from violence and drugs while never having "the talk" with their children. As a result, overprotecting a child hinders their growth in the world. This leads me to question when does innocence become a bad thing? When is it essential for a child to lose their innocence?

When I finished reading MAUS, The Bluest Eye, and "The History Teacher," I noticed that all of them touch upon the topic of innocence in some way. In MAUS, Vladek's "mother killed herself (she left no note)" (Spiegelman) which devastates him and makes him feel extremely guilty. Even though the Holocaust slowly chips away at his innocence, the death of his mother impacts him the most. It meant that he is no longer has a caring mother at his side to help him get through tough times. Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye literally loses her childhood innocence when Cholly, her own dad, rapes her. She had no idea what sex was or that incest is looked down upon so during the act, her blissful ignorance can be seen through "the rigidness of her shocked body, the silence of her stunned throat" (Morrison 162). Lastly, "The History Teacher" really emphasizes a teacher's effort to protect his kids from the tragedies in the past. He tells them "the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age" and "the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan" (Collins) which are huge understatements. The supposed history teacher makes the most important events in history seem very inconsequential. Even though the classroom became a very innocent place, "the children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart"(Collins) which shows how the children are bullies who became destructive and ignorant because of the teacher's method of teaching.

MAUS and The Bluest Eye are examples that illustrate unnecessary loss of innocence. Vladek and Pecola were both going through extreme hardship but their purity had to become completely destroyed by unfortunate events. However, "The History Teacher" depicts unnecessary preservation of innocence. A history teacher has to teach true, unsugarcoated facts in order for the kids to learn the mistakes of the past. Here, it becomes imperative that the students lose some of their innocence in order to progress the world forward. I am left with one question that I can't seem to answer: Can you regain innocence?