Image and Pilgrimage...Rite of Passage- Mary Ragan

Image and Pilgrimage gives a good description of Rite of Passage, which was developed by Arnold van Gennep. This concept contains three phases including separation, limen, and reaggregation. I just wrote my final paper on communitas formed on the AT and and included some information about rite of passage because communitas is a part of liminality, the in between stage. I think it is interesting to try to classify coming to college as a rite of passage, connecting all of the stages to experiences may of us encounter. We experience separation as we leave home and begin to be a lot more independent. We are not surrounded by many familiar things as we come into a completely new environment with completely new people. We are in liminality now as we are kind of in between being dependent and independent, still largely reliant on others but are also self reliant in many aspects such as our work and time management and friends. Most of us experiencing very similar feelings of happiness or difficulties and sentiments of self-discovery and search for purpose and those friends that we fit in best with, we kind of came to a level a playing field. I know that at least in my experience so far, there is not such a hierarchy of people that I think there was more of in high school which is just one thing that contributes to the formation of communitas as well. I anticipate reaggregation occurring upon graduation when we are off into the "real world" which I think may be unfamiliar after we have been in this somewhat sheltered and catered to environment. We emerge into a new place after being changed and transformed (p. 249). Although maybe not to the extent to which the concept of rite of passage is often applied, I think it helps to relate it to something we can identify with.