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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/21721
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/21721
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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.

1. person comes of age, has to find his/her place in the world, figure out his/her own values. _(almost every YA novel ever)_
2. 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?
3. 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.

Original score: 5