Here Is Your Life

The coming of age of Olof Persson is presented. This phase of his story begins in northern Sweden in 1914 when he is fourteen years old. He is just leaving the home of his foster parents, where he was first sent because of his own father's illness. Olof is now striking out on his own moving from one manual labor job to another. He is often put through rites of passage because of his age, or is exposed to adult issues solely because he is seen as just another one of the men. It isn't until he moves to the city at age sixteen and gets a job in the movie showing business - first at a cinema and then a traveling movie show - that he begins to deal with more adult issues and emotions of his own, such as acting on his desire for the opposite sex, the associated feeling of jealousy, and how he may want to direct his energies as an adult in his passions for philosophy and political activism of the socialist variety.