The Secret Lion

“I was twelve and in junior high school and something happened that we didn’t have a name for, but it was there nonetheless like a lion, and roaring, roaring the way that the biggest things do.”

This opening line introduces the key theme of the text: Loss of Innocence. The changes that come with growing up and entering junior high are represented by a lion, roaring so as not to be ignored. This is a symbol that will return at the end of the story to pull together both timelines.

“When a person had all these teachers now, he didn’t get taken care of in the same way, even though six was more than one.”

Transitioning to having a different teacher for each topic is difficult for the narrator. The irony is that one would expect more teachers to mean more oversight, but since each teacher sees him for less time, the narrator feels neglected. He does not feel ready to be left to his own devices in this way, and he resists the change.

“We would yell this stuff over and over because it felt good, we couldn’t explain why, it just felt good and for the first time in our lives there was nobody to tell us we couldn’t.”

One of the narrator’s key complaints in junior high is that he can’t ask questions like he used to, even as things around him constantly change. Going to the arroyo is the boys’ “solution” to these frustrations, as it is strongly tied to both their boyhood and their friendship. It is an escape from an adolescence and a place in which the boys do not need to “explain” themselves to be understood, relying instead on