The colorful paper that Benjamin encounters both times he attends kindergarten symbolizes the extent to which people change between different phases of life. When Benjamin first goes to kindergarten, he has no interest in playing with the colorful pieces of paper that captivate his classmates—he even falls asleep while the other children cut shapes out of the paper. This, of course, is because he isn’t a typical five-year-old boy. Instead, because of his reverse-aging condition, he has the body and mind of an old man, so the things that entertain children simply don’t appeal to him.
Conversely, Benjamin very much enjoys the colorful paper when he returns to kindergarten many years later. By this time, Benjamin has become an actual child in body and mind, so he thinks that cutting shapes out of the paper is the “most fascinating game in the world.” The paper itself thus represents the vast change that Benjamin has undergone, highlighting just how much a person’s developmental stage affects their entire way of being.
The Colorful Paper Quotes in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
But Mr. Button persisted in his unwavering purpose. Benjamin was a baby, and a baby he should remain. At first he declared that if Benjamin didn’t like warm milk he could go without food altogether, but he was finally prevailed upon to allow his son bread and butter, and even oatmeal by way of a compromise. One day he brought home a rattle and, giving it to Benjamin, insisted in no uncertain terms that he should “play with it,” whereupon the old man took it with a weary expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at intervals throughout the day.
When he was five he was sent to kindergarten, where he was initiated into the art of pasting green paper on orange paper, of weaving colored maps and manufacturing eternal cardboard necklaces. He was inclined to drowse off to sleep in the middle of these tasks, a habit which both irritated and frightened his young teacher. To his relief she complained to his parents, and he was removed from the school. The Roger Buttons told their friends that they felt he was too young.
By the time he was twelve years old his parents had grown used to him. Indeed, so strong is the force of custom that they no longer felt that he was different from any other child—except when some curious anomaly re- minded them of the fact.
Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day and Benjamin found that playing with little strips of colored paper, making mats and chains and curious and beautiful designs, was the most fascinating game in the world.
The Colorful Paper Symbol Timeline in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
