Manchild / Literature

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• Ascendance of a Bookworm: During Spring prayer, Myne travels alongside an adult priest who enjoys teasing people and generally likes doing as he pleases to annoying level. At some point, Myne internally quips that that he'd be easier to handle if he actually were a child.
• Bazil Broketail: Emperor Banwi of Ourdh is a pampered, spoiled man used to drinking or sleeping with his harem whenever he'd like. He throws petulant fits when forced to make himself a true ruler by Rybela, with many childish complaints over it now that he can't simply have his bureaucrats handle everything.
• The title character of Billy Budd is a textbook example.
• Bosun's Journal: The ancestors of the brat barons, who had been designed to be genius corporate planners and strategists, were brilliant by any human standard but lacked any real emotional intelligence, being extremely self-entitled and competitive. Their post-apocalyptic descendants retain their ancestors' arrogance and stunted emotional skills but have lost most of their ancestral cunning due to hundreds of generations spend without using it in their sedentary, indolent and isolated lifestyles. As a result, a typical brat baron only retains childlike levels of intelligence and emotional maturity even as an adult.
• Zhou Botong of the Condor Heroes martial arts novels is the Trope Codifier for Chinese literature. Despite essentially being the co-founder of one of the story's pivotal martial arts sects, he'll sneak off for fun at any given opportunity, making friends with the much-younger protagonists while imparting his unique brand of wisdom to them. Sex as Rite-of-Passage is averted early on, as the fact that he sired a child with an imperial concubine, while his fellow disciple (the founder of said sect) imparted a powerful technique to the Emperor, not only forms part of his backstory but arises later as an important plot point. On top of that, he's incredibly long-lived and one of the novel's most powerful characters.
• Charlie from Flowers for Algernon is a mentally disabled man in his thirties who remains very childish, naive and idealistic. He had also never had wet dreams or been attracted to women at the beginning of the book, although the realism of this aspect of his disorder is somewhat doubtful.
  • When he starts remembering things later on, he can remember being aroused by girls when he was little, which ended with his mother's traumatizing responses.
• In the Frozen Tie-In Novel A Frozen Heart, most of Prince Hans's 12 older brothers have become this because their father, the king of the Southern Isles, has spoiled them too much. Caleb is the worst of all, as being the heir and the king's favorite son transformed him into a Royally Spoiled Brat, blatantly ignoring his family by seeking his father's attention and treating the idea of running a kingdom as a toy or having a brawl with his brothers at the stables. Hans often saw most of his brothers as immature men, as they often picked on him for being the youngest of the large Westergaard clan.
• Harry Potter:
  • Downplayed with Sirius, Harry's godfather. He loves Harry very much but doesn't always act like the Parental Substitute Harry needs, he acts more like his buddy. He also is extremely Hot-Blooded and doesn't think through his actions like you'd expect someone in their early 20s to not have learned yet. On the other hand, this could be attributed to the fact that at age 22, one of his closest friends betrayed the others and he got framed, sending him to the wizarding version of Alcatraz, noted for having guards that feed on positive emotions of people before escaping and spending a year on the lam. As such, arrested development is a bit of an understatement since it's combined with truama and often having to transform into his dog form to maintain a sense of sanity. When he's forced to remain in his hated childhood home due to it being a safehouse, it really starts eating at him.
  • Snape plays this more straight. He's held onto a 20-year-old childhood grudge (at the beginning of the series) and doesn't keep his temper in check the way an adult would. He acts very violently emotional. He also takes this grudge out on two innocent kids, Harry and Neville. His love for Harry's mother, Lily, also doesn't come off the way an adult would love another adult. It comes off more as him Loving a Shadow and that he was in love with the idea of her without realizing that she was a person with flaws. He was more or less obsessed with the first girl who was nice to him for thirty years at the time of his death without her ever having loved him back and her having married another man. While he's a very competanant potioneer and wizard, he still acts very much like the spiteful resentful and insecure preteen he was when he first entered Hogwarts. This could largely be attributed to his emotionally neglectful mother and his abusive father.
• Elves in general in J. R. R. Tolkien's universe, but especially in The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. This is discussed over in Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, where Andreth tells Finrod that Men see Elves as overgrown, eternally young children.
• In Death: Poor Alice Lingstrom from Ceremony In Death turns out to be a child in a woman's body. She was just exploring Satanism and got involved in a Satanic cult. The cult drugged her and then gang-raped her. She was made into the cult leaders' slave for a time, but she left when she witnessed the two leaders sacrifice and murder a young boy. She actually thinks a spell had been cast on her, and that one of the leaders is a shapeshifter. Considering that she is suffering from trauma and paranoia, it is safe to say that her status of Womanchild is being Played for Drama.
• Bertie Wooster from Jeeves and Wooster. His valet is implied to be acting as his Parental Substitute, and he's very childish in general — loves playing in the shower "like a 2-year-old", doesn't know how to deal with women, and never got over his fear of his Grande Dame aunt.
• The books The Heroes of Olympus have Percy Jackson. He is a teenager and not an adult, but still behaves rather immaturely. Nico di Angelo notes that the older he gets, the more he realizes how childish Percy really is.
• Kino of Kino's Journey turns out to come from a country where all adults are examples of this — they're given surgery to become adults, rather than be allowed to grow naturally and gain genuine maturity and wisdom. Their apparent adulthood turns out to be nothing but the thinnest of veneers, and any real stress or deviation from routine reveals them to be little more than children in adult bodies, going through the motions of maturity. The scene where they childishly fumble for the "mature" way of dealing with one of them murdering the original Kino in what amounts to an overgrown temper tantrum is horrifying.
• The hydrite Quart'ol from the German SF series Maddrax has taken over some of its personality through telepathic contact with a human. Since then, by the standards of other hydrites, he has exhibited childish, immature behavior from time to time. However, ongoing character development has made him more serious and ruthless. From time to time, however, he still behaves a little humorously.
  • The three taratzes Krakkh, Xikarrh and Raouur are also represented in this way. They make fun of teasing the people around them a little. Xikarrh even took the time to scare a human warriorness by silently sneaking up on her and scaring her in this way.
• Quentin Coldwater of The Magicians. On the face of things, he's just as intelligent as everyone else enrolled at Brakebills, but he soon turns out to possess a number of extremely childish traits that grow more and more extreme as time goes on: he gradually grows dissatisfied with routine, speaks without thinking, fails to plan ahead, has a tendency to blame other people for his own mistakes or prioritize the mistakes of others over his own, and he's obsessed with the Fillory And Further book series (which were intended for children). After these tendencies end up totaling his relationship with Alice, she angrily describes him as a child — a point that completely fails to connect with him until it's too late.
• This is exactly how General Thiébault describes General Junot in his Mémoires ("At heart, he was not a man but a child, who could age but never grow up"); he gives spectacular examples of his extravagances and general immaturity, which he mentions as the main cause of his disgrace. Having read the secret diary of Junot's own wife, the Duchess of Abrantès (in which she recounts how he flew into a jealous rage and attempted to rape and murder her upon discovering her affair with Prince Metternich), modern authors tend to put him more on the psychopathic side instead.
• Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime: In "Red Christmas", Bud Schmidt is still writing to Santa for books, games, and a Farrah Fawcett poster despite being forty-three, and remains an amiable bumbler as a seventyish retiree in "Fruitcake".
• Lennie Small from Of Mice and Men is a deconstruction; he's childlike due to being developmentally challenged, but since he combines a small child's brain with the body of a huge, powerful man, well... things tend to turn out badly.
• Eddie, in Mother by Philip José Farmer, is a fully-grown man and accomplished singer but depends heavily on his scientist mother for all his medical and emotional needs. This has some interesting effects when she is deliberately caught and eaten by an intelligent alien with strong maternal instincts.
• Dorian Gray, from The Picture of Dorian Gray seems like one of these when first introduced. His innocence is obvious, and he is naive and gullible enough to be influenced by his friends to adopt their lifestyle right away, without any opinions of his own. There's also the fact that throughout the novel he's referred to as a "boy," "lad," or "youth," even though he is at least eighteen.
  • Upon realizing he won't stay pretty forever, his response is basically to sob into a pillow.
• In the Rainbow Magic series, Jack Frost sleeps with a teddy bear, is scared of the dark, and on the whole is very petty and childish.
• The Ripple System: Ersatz, guild leader of Corruptia, is a screaming, whiny baby who calls cheater whenever anything doesn't go his way, while pulling all sorts of underhanded tricks himself. He also yells at his own guild members when they follow his orders to sabotage Ned in a way that sabotages themselves. Despite, again, it being his idea. On the other hand, he is genuinely a brilliant strategist and tactician; he has to be, because otherwise no one would stay in his guild.
• An example in The Shadowhunter Chronicles. Chain of Gold shows Will Herondale as a mild example. Despite being a grown man with two teenage children, Cordelia Carstairs feels like he's a little boy inside. He also stands out among the shadow hunters because he is constantly joking. But if he wants, he can also be serious.
  • Another example is Magnus Bane. Although he can also be very serious, he often displays immature behavior. However, this is not uncommon for warlocks, because when nothing can surprise them, they petrify inside.
  • Lily Chen is a vampire of almost 130 years. She often has a tendency to joke or otherwise act childishly.
• Sherlock Holmes definitely. Though he is capable of being serious (especially if his friend's life is threatened), he does strange things to solve cases.
• A Sick Day for Amos McGee: Downplayed for Amos, who on the one hand sleeps with a teddy bear, talks to his sugar bowl, and plays hide-and-seek, but on the other hand is a competent zookeeper and plays chess.
• Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: The Vigilantes seem to act like womenchildren a number of times. At least Myra Rutledge and Countess Anne "Annie" de Silva have the excuse of being rich 60-something-year-old ladies who may have never developed maturity...or they lost it as they got older! Cosmo Cricket, introduced in Final Justice, could be considered this. However, he has wisdom and is quite responsible in his job as a lawyer!
• Lieutenant Panga in Someone Else's War.
• Tom Cullen in The Stand (due to being mentally disabled). He's middle-aged, but enjoys playing with toy cars.
• Star Wars Legends: Lieutenant Wes Janson of the X-Wing Series is a classic example, between his pranks, general irreverence towards everything in life, and his boundless sense of humor. He is capable of being serious, when actively shooting at things, but it's not his natural state. However, he explains that this is a deliberate part of his philosophy of living life to its fullest, given the mortality rate of his chosen profession.
  Janson: I want you to remember something very important: you can't look dignified when you're having fun.
  Myn Donos: I... I'm asking for career advice, from a 9-year-old.
• To Lucky, the Leashed Dogs in Survivor Dogs seem like this. They still play as if they're puppies, which is strange to a dog that lives on the streets like him.
• Edward of Twilight is over 100-years-old, a virgin, and decides to start a relationship with a human whose blood smells sweet to him and his presence puts her in constant danger. He gets better, although she gets MUCH worse.
  • Bella herself counts towards being a woman-child with her personality usually ranging from doormat to manipulative sociopath with her manipulation of Jacob and Edward.
    • At least she's an immature teenager (despite Informed Ability claims to be mature), albeit even more selfish and perspective-challenged than most. What's Edward's excuse?
    • When one becomes a vampire in the series, they more or less stop developing, physically and possibly mentally. Since Edward was a young man when he got The Spanish Flu and converted, he hasn't aged since then.
• In Warbreaker, the God-Emperor Susebron turns out to be so sheltered by his priesthood that he thinks he can conceive a child by sitting in the same room as a woman. Justified in that the high-ranking members of the priesthood were terrified of what he might do with his phenomenal Awakening powers if he knew enough about the world to take an active interest. Once he gets to spend time around people who treat him as a person instead of an object of worship, he proves to be a very precocious student.
• Tigger comes off as this compared to the other animals in Winnie the Pooh. He's even sillier and more irresponsible than the other characters, he lives with Kanga, and he's best friends with her infant son, Roo. He appears older, but when you consider that he "came to the woods" (i.e. was purchased) more recently than the other characters, he's technically younger even than Roo.
• Sharon from World War Z is one of the more tragic examples. She's one of the "ferals", young people who grew up with little (if any) human contact after losing (or being abandoned by) their parents during the Zombie War, and has mentally never progressed beyond the level of a young child. However, she has retained some language skills and is able to describe the events which led to her living wild, albeit in a very simplistic way.
• Alberto, aunt Brunilda's son in The Yellow Bag, is only 14 years old but acts rather immature for his age, having fun tormenting Raquel while she's over.

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