Throughout World’s Fair by E.L. Doctorow, Edgar matures to an appreciable extent. Maturation is an extremely ambiguous term that has been taken two different directions by readers. The term is understood by some readers to indicate that by maturing, Edgar is entering into a new life of heightened adult responsibility that will bring him more contentment and respect. However, Edgar finds that he does not enjoy handling this new found responsibility, and expresses signs of missing the freedoms of his childhood once he does mature. Ultimately, Edgar finds himself burdened with the duty of showing his parents around the Fair and along with his brother Donald, he must make up for his father’s downfalls by living with his mother after they move into a new apartment, and attempt to make his mother happy again. By presenting to the reader how Edgar negatively reacts to taking on an adult role in his family, Doctorow proves that Edgar would have been better off remaining a child. Doctorow begins World’s Fair by introducing Edgar as a character who is constantly ignored by his family and viewed as insignificant. Some readers have viewed this as a downfall to childhood. However, Edgar manages to make the best of this situation and discovers that the parts of his childhood that he finds so enjoyable, such as experiencing love for the first time, coming to understand the meaning of sex, his full comprehension of death, and finding joy in magic, all outweigh this one trivial downfall. Through the use of detailed descriptions narrated by Edgar depicting his childlike nature, Doctorow is able to convince us that children are able to offer a new perspective and heightened awareness that adults simply are not capable of providing. Doctorow also shows how Edgar’s parents, Rose and Dave, transform from being naive young adults who are utterly in love, to being extremely discontent in their relationship and in their adult world. While they are striving to be adequate parents for Edgar and Donald, neither one of them is able to achieve this and ultimately end up completely hopeless. The parents, along with Donald, are transforming into increasingly more gloomy and argumentative individuals as they age, while Edgar is gradually becoming more like the mature adult that he hopes to be in the beginning of the novel. However, this does not bring him any more contentment than he began with, ultimately proving to both himself and the reader that to remain a child is ultimately the best option. It becomes clear that Donald is discontent with his responsibilities in the adult-world he finds himself submerged in. When the reader compares Edgar’s reactions to this adult world to the way Edgar views the world as a child, we realize just how much more happy Edgar would have been had he not ever matured. When we reach the final pages of the novel, it is arguable that Edgar desires to put himself into his time capsule along with his belongings and return to his imaginative and eventful childhood. Adults may have some benefits in a world in which adults are considered older and wiser, yet they are unable to view the world in the same way open-mind and naive children are. Therefore, why should young people respect their elders, who are in actuality more immature than they are themselves? Children are thought of as immature and not worth listening to, when in actuality, our elders are the ones who still have some growing up to do. In an interview with Alvin Sanoff, Doctorow discusses how it is human nature for adults to not want to revert back to their childhoods (Morris 102-3). Furthermore, he explains that when adults do manage to recall the things they have forgotten, they typically remember that being a child was a surprisingly wonderful time (102). Doctorow has created a novel in which the protagonist Edgar, is an equivalent to himself- a boy who discovers how delightful being a child can be. When Doctorow was asked if he attempts to deliver a specific way that children perceive the world, he replied that he has always had a keen interest in children and that in World’s Fair he is “more descriptive of the immense, complicated moral life that children lead” (Morris 127). Edgar shows just how complex the life of a child in World’s Fair. The events that unfold throughout World’s Fair prove how interesting a life children experience daily. Doctorow has reflected on his own personal childhood, explaining how he now realizes how good he had it as a child in comparison to the adults around him who were failing to find enjoyment in life: “Nowadays educators, psychologists speak of the ideal of the enriched childhood, and I see how enriched mine was amidst these hard-living adults who struggled to pay the rent” (Doctorow 21). Doctorow has taken his own childhood has an inspiration to describe Edgar, a child who eventually realizes that in comparison to his mother and father struggling with life’s affairs, he was much better