Through the eyes of the maturing adolescent Charlie we see that Jasper Jones is ultimately about the transition into the adult world and coming to terms with the experiences, no matter how ugly and disturbing they are. We see Charlie beginning to understand the world around him without the filter of childhood ignorance, and the atrocities that become evident. Charlie finds himself growing up and entering the wider world of adulthood, where he experiences events that are shocking and unsettling to the sheltered, bookish 13 year old. Charlie undergoes anxiety and trauma due to these experiences, as he tries to understand them, and he finds the need to keep the dark secrets of Corrigan bottled up inside himself.
After Charlie enters his early teens he grows from a introverted, curious boy to a more awkward yet enlightened teenager. This realisation forces upon him the burdens of responsibility and choice. The very first step Charlie takes in this growth is when he is called…show more content… Immediately he experiences intense sensory responses, rocked to the core by the "horrible scene", that is "too horrible for words". The second major event is the point when An Lu's "beautiful" garden is destroyed by four men. Charlie is disbelieving at first, "stunned", but then becomes horrified by the brutal beating that the men deliver to An Lu later that night as he goes to sleep, feeling as though "there's something squeezing [his] heart". These intense experiences and Charlie's understanding about them is another aspect of his growth as an adolescent, but the final and most significant growth that he undergoes is when he fully begins to question the experiences and the previously untainted world around him, comprehending it all and creating his own views, ones that aren't
