Identity Development during Adolescence

Billy, the adolescent hero in Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Crossing (1994), pauses in his search for the path that will lead him to his stolen horses and, symbolically, point the way into his own adult life. He listens to the words of an older opera singer as she conveys something of the road ahead. That journey one must make alone, she informs him. It is difficult even for two brothers to travel together on such a journey, for each person will have a different understanding of the same road. And some may not even wish to see what lies before them in plain sight. Everyone's journey upon the road will lead somewhere, whether to their original purposes or not. The road lying in front of Billy holds many fearful, painful, as well as pleasurable rites of passage and symbolizes the journey that each youth must make into the unknown terrain of adult life. Billy is equipped with a goal (to retrieve stolen horses and avenge his parents' deaths), with his own mental and physical skills sharpened for survival in pursuit of this goal, and with the companionship of his younger brother and a girl. It is the vision of a desired future, retrieving horses, which enables Billy to set out on a road. And it is this particular desired future that causes him to select the particular road that he chooses, from among many possibilities. Community response, sometimes sage, sometimes shattering, provides Billy with a sense of where his boundaries are and who and what he will become.