Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
Published 1928 · 74,831 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Anthropology & Folklore, Nonfiction, Politics & Society, Psychology
How hard is Coming of Age in Samoa to read?
Coming of Age in Samoa scores 28 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 32 out of 100
- Written for a general audience. Ethnographic terms are explained.
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Concrete ethnographic description with broad cultural implications.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Rich ethnographic detail balanced with readable narrative.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Direct ethnographic account organized thematically.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- Samoa as mirror for American anxieties about adolescence.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Implicit critique of American society through contrast with Samoa.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Clear thesis: adolescent turbulence is cultural, not biological.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Fourteen chapters organized thematically. Straightforward structure.
How Coming of Age in Samoa is regarded
Coming of Age in Samoa holds a literary regard score of 80 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.