Bildungsroman

Hall as a time when younger individuals experience emotional and behavioral confusion, prior to establishing stability and reaching adulthood. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain serve as examples of bildungsromans, where the protagonists lack the ideal, care-free childhood filled with innocence; Huck faces an alcoholic father, and Jane encounters cruelty from her aunt. Both characters confront contradictory desires influenced by society as well as…

In Harper Lee’s Bildungsroman novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, the underlying themes of maturing, acceptance, and relationships are shown articulately through Scout and Jem’s character. The relationship between the Finch children and Arthur “Boo” Radley undergoes a significant change between the beginning and conclusion of the novel. From the mysterious nightmare next door, to someone who can be called a “friend”, the childrens’ perception of “Boo” went through drastic changes. Through the…

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hossein and Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng are complex and multifaceted novels that contextualize many prevalent themes in our modern society. Both novels epitomise the ubiquitous impacts that an individual’s milieu can instigate upon their psychological development. Hosseini’s historical novel actively explores the salience of familial bonds, the inevitable theme of gender roles and the unexpected yet unchangeable aspect of abandonment that exist…

In this excerpt from A Summer Life, Gary Soto recounts a memory from his early childhood. As he walks through his memory, Soto recalls the effects sin had on his still developing mind; however, looking back as an adult, Soto realizes that the root cause of his naive fear was his Catholic upbringing. Soto satirizes the Church in an attempt to prevent the perpetuation of the overbearing “Catholic guilt” on younger generations through the use of this powerful anecdote. From the beginning of the…

adolescence when he decides to be a boy Cal. But it is important to clear that it is more than a hermaphrodite story. Middlesex explores the middle ground not just between sexes but also between Greek and American culture. It is a broad and complex Bildungsroman (coming of age) that tells an immigration saga of a Greek family and explores gender identity among a various other themes like race,…

The given passage from the bildungsroman novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is written by James Joyce. The extract appears towards the end of the novel, after the priest spoke to Stephen about becoming a priest and living a clerical life and before Stephan receives an epiphany from a girl wading in the sea. In this extract we witness how Stephen devotes the rest of his life to one of artistic expression. This is relevant to Joyce’s Aristotelian approach to art. This approach…

I am going to analyze these two texts from the scope of the captivity narrative as a genre. This idea is very clear in the case of Mary Rowlandson’s text due to it is the most representative work of this genre. Something different happens with THE HUNGER GAMES that can be classified within several genres as we will see below. As Derounian-Stodola defines “the term captivity narrative refers to a literal or symbolic, factual or fictional story in which a captor takes a hostage” (243), which…

K00613900 Janie Crawford: Mule of the World, or Strong Independent Woman? In Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes were Watching God, she explores the dichotomy between defining one’s individuality and conforming to society’s roles and norms. Throughout the novel, we see how the character Janie grows as a person with each relationship she finds herself in. Each person Janie encounters, changes her perspective on herself as well as the world around her. However, these experiences create a fluctuation in…

When asked to name a favorite superhero, countless people of all ages will quickly respond with Spider-Man. Peter Parker first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15, written by Marvel legend Stan Lee and illustrated by Steve Ditko in 1962, in an issue that explained the origin of his spider-based powers and his status as a misfit high school student fascinated by science. The art is made up of bright primary colors and thick, classic line work that makes the comic accessible and inviting to readers of…

self, the adversities that are faced are all dependent on the environment in which the person surrounds himself or herself with. Tobias Wolff demonstrates the struggle of finding a true identity when consumed by such harsh surroundings in his bildungsroman style memoir ‘This Boy’s Life”. Despite each personas dreams of transformation, the memoir depicts each character’s struggles to find their identity given the patriarchal society in which they are exposed to; where men are expected to be…