: Re: YA novel with old protagonist? Edit: There have been a few very good answers and comments. The feedback I've got so far has made me question whether I'm even going into the right direction

@Carla500

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Your listed themes and goals are at cross-purposes. You have:

finding your place in the world
living according to your values
figuring out what really matters to you
questioning assumptions
sticking up against authority
who gets to decide what a society should be like
balancing desires that are equally important but can't be reconciled
(the rebellion and the family)
making sacrifices
deciding which sacrifices are worth it
coming of age story
struggling with the tension between your ideals and the way the world
actually works
figuring out that you can't have it all and that that's ok

You really have several stories going on here.

person comes of age, has to find his/her place in the world, figure
out his/her own values. (almost every YA novel ever)
person living in totalitarian society which dictates all
parts of life, and protagonist must decide whether to fight the
power. Does society even want or need change?
person must decide whether to sacrifice an established life,
including a spouse and dependent children, in order to save the
greater good.

So while these are three interesting stories, they are not the same story. You can't have the protagonist of the YA story who is trying to figure out where she belongs in the world also be the 30YO middle manager who is willing to abandon his wife and children and join an underground rebellion for The Good Of The Many. That person IS "of age." Losing your established life and dependents is a very different fear/risk/loss than "finding your place in the world" for the first time. You are right that making the middle manager younger would weaken his plotline/character, but someone who's older and established cannot have the flailing, lost, unanchored feelings you're also trying to pursue.

The most straightforward way to deal with this, I think, is have multiple protagonists.

So you have your Katniss YA heroine who is just waking up to the wider world and realizing how Big Brother is controlling everything. Then you have your Winston Smith middle manager who finds himself arrested and then on the run. Your third plot can be the world-weary rebel leader who has seen this rebellion go on for a while, has seen the toll it takes on the lives of the Winstons and the Katnisses, and is trying to decide whether it's worth it or whether she should chuck it all and go back to her own life.

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