It is not the decision in itself that is so significant, but the underlying reasons for this decision. He ignores all of society's "rights- and instead makes them into moral rights.
Much like Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Francis from The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys undergoes an individual maturation and development. Although it doesn't specifically have to do with morals and decision making like Huck, Francis reaches maturity in the end. Throughout the story, Francis and his friends are nave and innocent. They see grown-ups in black and white; if they liked someone, that person was a hero, if they did not; he or she was a villain. Francis's greatest enemy is Sister Ascension, their school principal, who looks out for their well being. Francis's coming-of-age consists not of his efforts against authority, but one that every teenager goes through. He experiences different levels of friendships, his first hangover, and his first serious kiss. In addition he falls in and out of love for the first time in his life, and lives through the major loss of his friend, Tim. All of these predicaments that he goes through are the basis for the changed Francis that the reader sees at the end of the story.
So they say, now I am a young adult. However, I beg to differ, I wonder if I really am. How do you know when someone is a young adult? Is it determined by age, or by physical maturity and such? Most label people from the ages of perhaps thirteen to nineteen as young adults. I believe that a young adult is someone who is able to make decisions on his or her own and back it up with legitimate reasoning. A young adult is not only a person in a mature body but it is someone with social maturity aswell.
Although I have not yet made any life-altering decisions, there is one event that I consider the marking period of being a young adult. Throughout my childhood, my parents have always paid all my expenses, whether it was for entertainment or education.
