What is loss of innocence?

Maturity does not happen one fine day. It comes in doses. And doses of hardships, bitter experiences. Small incidents project how tough or cruel life is, people are. We do not grow up in one go. Experiences, rejection, failures, challenges, tests, relationships, each such incident of life which is tough and new helps us grow. Learning is a default function in all this.

In literary language this growing up, gaining maturity is called “loss of innocence”. Not that writers make life easier and state so explicitly in their stories. But a harsh incident, confronting bitter truths indirectly shows development in character. This development in character is “loss of innocence” in most cases. Especially, in cases of children experiencing such incidents.

In “Of White hairs and cricket” for example, the narrator does not want to pluck out white hair from his father’s head. He detests the Sunday morning ritual. However, when he sees his friend’s father near death on the makeshift hospital bed, he faces the bitter truth of aging followed by possible death. In the end he is more than willing to do what he had started out not doing. He does not want his father to grow old. He does state it to his father but deep inside he wants life to go at the pace it was earlier. This is the process that shows growth in character and the child grows up. He loses his innocence.

Ravi of “Games at twilight” wants to be the winner. He hides in a shed, loses trace of time. By the time he comes out to declare himself the winner he realizes that his cousins have moved on to playing other games. While he was crafting his dreams of being the winner, his disappearance had not been missed. On the contrary his playmates were making merry. Two things happen here. He realizes that he had not been missed. He also realizes that his victory was lost. He has to confront these two truths. He grows up. Ravi, thus, loses his innocence. Though the writer does not state it in so many words.

The job of understanding the writer’s purpose is of the reader. The loss is not stated it is implied. We, the readers, have to recognize and define loss of innocence.