54 pages • 1-hour read
Half His Age
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes themes of sex, child sexual abuse, and emotional abuse.
The Inherent Harm in Adult-Child Relationships
Waldo’s relationship with her teacher, Mr. Teddy Korgy, interrogates the dangers of unbalanced romantic and sexual relationships. Waldo is just 17 years old when she becomes involved with her high school creative writing teacher, while Korgy is in his forties. Their significant age-gap and their roles in each other’s lives immediately put Waldo at a disadvantage, exposing the inherent harm in adult-child relationships.
Even before they begin their sexual affair, Waldo understands herself as inferior to her teacher. Her internal monologue in the scene where Korgy waits with her for Triple-A conveys this dynamic: “He doesn’t patronize me, he just has a lot of life experience that I don’t. Life experience that gives him a perspective I couldn’t possibly fathom. He’s the adult. I’m the child” (72-73). As a child, Waldo is naturally looking for authority figures in her life whom she can trust, respect, and look to for guidance. She sees Korgy as her elder, not just because of his age, but because he is her intellectual and academic superior. She assumes the submissive position in their dynamic because of her vulnerable age and circumstances.
As the adult in the relationship, Korgy exploits Waldo’s innocence and vulnerability, causing her physical, emotional, and psychological harm. Their dynamic is a typical example of grooming, a process by which an abuser manipulates a child victim to gain access to them and to ensure the victim’s silence, with the predator often presenting themselves as a likeable, respectable member of the community. Waldo sees Korgy as “upstanding” and trustworthy because he is her teacher. He also presents himself in an open manner during their first creative writing course, asserting that if he is “asking [his students] to be truthful” in their writing, “I figure it’s only fair that I do the same” (12). This introduction disarms Waldo and convinces her that Korgy is a nonthreatening individual. As their relationship progresses, she continues to believe that he has her best interest in mind, and to interpret his gestures and words as evidence of his care, rather than proof of his exploitation. The longer this dynamic goes on, the more hurt, alone, and trapped Waldo feels, perpetually bending to Korgy’s schedule, demands, needs, and half-truths.
Ultimately, Korgy faces no repercussions for abusing Waldo, and Waldo is left to pick up the proverbial pieces of her life through sheer determination and will. Korgy often paints himself as the victim of his own intense emotions for Waldo—a standpoint which again preys on Waldo’s vulnerability and causes her to feel guilty for supposedly hurting and manipulating Korgy. By the novel’s end, however, Waldo realizes that she is neither responsible for how Korgy feels nor for his behavior. She is only responsible for freeing herself. Since Korgy has compelled her into silence, Waldo doesn’t seek help to liberate herself from Korgy, and instead leaves him of her own volition.
Consumerism as an Emotional Placeholder
Waldo’s obsessive online shopping habit conveys her internal struggle to pursue and exact her own desires. Although Waldo is nominally “young and free,” she feels perpetually trapped by her circumstances. Before she and Korgy become involved, she is alienated and weighed down by adult responsibilities, using consumerism as an emotional placeholder.
Waldo’s shopping is a reflection of how she has to shoulder many adult responsibilities despite her young age. She buys her own car, laptop, clothes, and gas, pays the electric bill, does “the laundry and the dishes and the vacuuming” (94). She has also experienced parentification, as she has “been managing [her] mom’s emotions since [she] was five” (94) and primarily worries about “if water’s gonna come out of the faucet the next time [she] turn[s] it on” or if her mom is “gonna be bedridden from a breakup” (95). She does not have a healthy teenage existence, which leaves her feeling empty, confused, overwhelmed, and resentful. To fill these voids or to stave off her own emotions, Waldo turns to consumerism.
The recurring scenes of Waldo filling online shopping carts, going on shopping sprees, or obsessing over her clothes and makeup illustrate her desperation for fulfillment. Waldo is terrified of her own desires. She longs “to be breezy and carefree and cool […] to be satisfied. To be satiated. To be grateful. To be content” (134). However, Waldo’s inability to stop buying, eating, or watching television indicates that her appetite will not be quelled. Instead of identifying what she really wants and needs, Waldo uses consumerism to numb herself. Each time she opens a bag of junk food or purchases another full shopping cart, she waits to feel a high or a rush of satisfaction—but it never comes. Instead, she is left feeling disappointed and even more empty. Her dissatisfaction with her bingeing habits—be it reality television, potato chips, or fast fashion—reveals her dissatisfaction with her life, relationships, and herself.
The foods, products, and programs Waldo consumes are all attempts at remaking herself into a more palatable version of herself—one whose body is quieter and smaller and whose personality is calmer and easier. When she shops online, she fills her virtual carts “with items that can carry [her] away, that can lift [her] into a version of [her]self who is light and whole and happy and satisfied with what she’s got. Who wants for nothing because she has everything she could possibly need” (126). However, this person is as inauthentic as the “natural” makeup she often tries to wear or the easy effect she tries to create via countless costume changes.
Consumerism ultimately cannot erase the true Waldo and cannot eradicate her real emotions. The scene where she cleans out her bathroom cabinets and tosses all her old or useless products captures her work to make peace with who she is, to stop masking her emotions, and to brave life with more authenticity and nerve.
The Impact of Loneliness and Longing on Coming of Age
Waldo’s familial, social, and circumstantial isolation complicates her ability to come of age in a healthy manner. Waldo lives in a tiny apartment with her single mother, who is rarely home. Although often working, her mother is primarily preoccupied with her boyfriends, consistently shirking her maternal responsibilities to devote her energies to her romantic relationships instead. In examining how her mother’s emotional and physical neglect affects Waldo, the novel explores the impact of loneliness and longing on coming of age.
The repeated scenes of Waldo coming home to an empty house but for a sticky note from her mother and a frozen dinner in the freezer illustrate the significance of her mother’s absence and Waldo’s alienation. Waldo does appreciate when her mother is home—typically after a breakup—and they are able to reconnect over their shared love for reality television and grocery store baked goods. However, such moments are rare, leaving Waldo with no consistent home life, parental guidance, or secure attachment. As a result, she turns toward consumerism and unsatisfying sexual relationships to quell her sorrow and longing for love.
Since Waldo’s loneliness is so profound, she undervalues herself. She perceives her estranged father, absent mother, and single friendship as evidence of her insignificance. Her low self-esteem—and lack of a steady archetypal guide—compels her to become involved with Mr. Korgy and to perceive him as trustworthy. When they first start spending time together outside of school, for example, Waldo decides that she isn’t sure if, as she says, “I’m supposed to be offended, or ashamed, or embarrassed, to be someone’s secret, their stressor, and maybe their regret, but I’m not. It almost doesn’t matter what I am to him, just that I’m something to him. Like being something to him makes me something” (92, emphasis added). What Waldo really wants is to be seen, understood, and valued. Her relationships with her mother, with Frannie, and with her string of high school boyfriends have offered her no validation, and so she convinces herself that intimacy with Korgy is the answer.
While Waldo’s loneliness and longing immobilize her in the novel’s early sequences, these same experiences compel her toward change and independence by the novel’s end. For months, Waldo seeks validation in the wrong places and devotes her energies to pleasing others instead of identifying and pursuing her own desires. By the novel’s end, she liberates herself by taking control of her circumstances. The image of her driving away from home and toward Seward is symbolic of this liberation. She is by herself, but her solitude is empowering rather than debilitating; her solitude is evidence of her strength and self-possession rather than her deficiency.
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