Wunderkind

What is the theme in Wunderkind by Carson McCullers?

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Other themes of success and failure are themes. Unlike most other teenagers, Frances's turmoil is further complicated by the career demands she has taken on from so early an age, and the competitive pressure for artistic success. She cannot remain a Wunderkind any more than she can remain a child. The skill and potential she has shown in the past are no longer good enough; it is time for her to approach mature artistry, and significant achievements on the adult level. Readers may even feel she undermines her own musical career: by giving in to its pressures does she flee from Bilderbach himself (who seems to want only to help her achieve her dream), or from what he represents—the obligation to live up to the high expectations everyone has had for her? Her musical ability has always made people treat her as "special" and exceptional; in a sense, her musicianship has been her very identity, never questioned, so much an assumed part of her life that, without it, she may feel she hardly exists at all.