The Secret Lion

The story’s structure allows the narrator to string together three key moments in his Loss of Innocence. In the frame timeline, the narrator is experiencing changes related to the academic and social differences between elementary and junior high school. Next, the narrator describes how he and his friend found and lost a grinder ball that symbolizes a vanished, idyllic youth. Finally, a story from earlier in the narrator’s childhood reiterates how learning about the world destroys childhood innocence. All three stories come together through the symbol of the lion. The lion must be heeded when it roars, just like the changes that come with time. Ultimately, the narrator recognizes the inevitability of change but seeks to preserve a memory of untainted perfection.

The story’s frame establishes the narrator’s resistance to the changes that come with growing up. He does not like how his academic life has changed, or how his relationships with girls and teachers have changed. In entering junior high, he has left behind the simplicity of childhood and gained more responsibilities. Social relationships change as well, with girls no longer being “the same girls that [he] used to know because [he] couldn’t talk to them anymore, not the same way [he] used to” (98).