Simone De Beauvoir Case
The coming of age is a book by Simone De Beauvoir which was published on May 12th 1973. It is generally a book that Simone wrote as a study of the future of every single human being; those who are lucky enough to reach old age. The book is divided into two, the first part essentially deals with “old age as seen from without” (which forms the first question) and the second which deals with “old age from within”. In her introduction Simone describes that “every human situation can be viewed from without which entails being viewed from the point of the outsider and from within which means being seen from the point of view of the people living it which in this case it’s the old people” (Beauvoir, 1973). In order to conclusively answer the first question one must try and answer these questions, what societal conditioning are people blinded by when considering old people in the society? What does it really mean to be old? (the biological, societal and ethnological point of view) these are all used by Simone in the book especially the first part where she tries to look at old age from the point of view of without.
Simone engages the reader of the book by first highlighting that although death may be the end point of every individual old age is not a mere highway to death but life in itself. In the preface of the book Simone writes that old age is not merely a statistical fact it is actually the prolongation and the last stage of a certain process (which in this case is life). She then poses the question what does this process consist of? What does old age mean? In an effort to show how meaningful old age is she compares it with that of a fetus and a newborn baby where she cites that the life of a child is a continuous change must anyone therefore say as others have said that it is a gradual death? Simone refutes this paradox and says that” it disregards the basic truth of life. She cites that life as an unstable system where stability and balance is lost but its however gained and asserts that it is inertia synonymous with death “(Beauvoir, 1973). This shows that from the beginning of the book Simone starts by showing the reader the meaning of life at old age and try to change their perspective of old age.
Simone critically looks at the aging process and scrutinizes both the men and women. Her detail is so deep that it is actually similar to that of a medical expert as she looks at the physical changes that come with old age. In the book she writes that ”the growth of the skin causes a thickening of the eyelids, while at the same time hollows appear beneath the eyes. The upper lip becomes thinner: the lobe of the ear increases in size. There are changes in the skeleton, too. With the compression of the discs the vertebrae com e closer together; the spine is bowed. Between forty-five and eighty five men’s chest diminish by ten centimeters and women’s by fifteen” (Beauvoir, 1973). This shows how drastic the human