“To love someone is nothing, to be loved by someone is something, but to be loved by the one you love is everything” – Bill Russell
(First Love) Forever by Judy Blume
When I read the cover of Judy Blume’s “Forever” it peaked my interest. I wanted to know a bit more about the book first before I started to read. I eventually did a bit of research beforehand. I found out that Forever was written in the 70’s. This alone made me read the novel with another view then I would have before. First love is introduced in Forever as well as first sexual encounters. The book is written in a fairly easy way and I read it in a couple of hours.
In the book we follow Katherine’s and Michael’s relationship. It is an intense first-love full of intimacy and heartache. The two are falling head-over-heels for each other in a short amount of time. They cannot see their lives without each other anymore. The couple faces reality after a while and go through some difficulties. This gives the reader an insight on how young adolescents cope with the challenges they face in relationships.
““Forever?” he asked.
“Forever,” I said.” (Blume,1975, p. 93)
Katherine and Michael are very involved in the relationship. They even get to know the families of their partner. We see how they grow towards each other in a more intimate way. We can read in the process when they come close together that Katherine gets educated by her mother and grandmother about certain topics. The topics that are covered by Blume in the novel are menstruation, sexual intercourse for the first time, pregnancy, contraception and abortion. The readers are introduced to elements they would otherwise not read in a novel from the 70’s. This made Forever such a controversial book back in the day in the United States. Blume’s way of educating young adolescents made them take the necessary precautions before having sex, which is so important. Blume did an excellent job covering the subjects mentioned above in the book.
We discussed in our group the relationship between Katherine and her parents. We found it very interesting that she could openly talk about her relationships with her parents. We could also identify with Katherine when she did not see eye to eye with her parents and wanted to be a good daughter. According to Appleyard: “There is also a cognitive explanation in the fact that children’s idealised views of their parents’ authority and omniscience are often discovered to be wanting just in these years when they go to school and begin to acquire skills and learn information on their own.”(n.d. p. 20). We can see in the book that Katherine’s parents opinion is very important to her. In the beginning of the book she wants them to like Michael after a while she starts to rebel. This is because she starts to fall in love with Michael and her parents are against their relationship, according to Katherine. She starts to explore the world around her and this makes it sometimes that she does not want to listen to her parents. Katherine and Michael eventually break up.
The book is suitable for readers from the ages of twelve years and older. Readers from that age group will be in stage five of Erikson’s’ theory of psychosocial development. This is the identity versus confusion stage, a time for young adolescents to learn about different types of relationships.
Overall, I found the book to be a very accurate representation of first love. It is also a good book for young adolescents to learn about relationships and the aspects that come with it. Word count without quotes: 529 words
Literature 