Bildungsroman

Rowling's speech "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination" and the film, “The Last Cab to Darwin', the audience learns that with experience comes personal development and consequently a changed perspective. In the bildungsroman Maestro, composer Peter Goldsworthy positions the responder, through retrospective narration to view the protagonists Paul Crabbe and Eduard Keller from a particular viewpoint. The epiphanic novel emphasises the themes of gaining maturity,…

ideal society has pushed on to him. Huck is able to become an independent individual and create his own viewpoints on multiple aspects of life which sets him apart from the rest of 19th century America. The novel depicts the literary device of Bildungsroman as Huck develops his own views on society's racial climate, makes decisions based on his personal…

Tomás Rivera’s bildungsroman novel ‘y no se lo tragó la tierra’ - translated into English as ‘…and the Earth did not devour him’ is a seminal piece of literature within the Chicano literary movement, as it portrayed a realism not seen within the genre ever before. The semi-autobiographical novel was published in 1971, and the influential text deals with a broad spectrum of aspects as it depicts life growing up within the Mexican American migrant community, with the text itself commentating on…

illustrates the enduring universal values. Weldon also recognises the moral guidance provided by literature in the didactic statement we should look to fiction for moral instruction”, exemplified in the character development of Elizabeth in the Bildungsroman Pride and Prejudice as her “former prejudices have been removed”, encapsulating literature as an imperative and a virtuous guide to overcome individual’s inherent flaws. Weldon’s context which encourages female autonomy…

The eminent 17th century French poet, Jean de La Fontaine once said: “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it”. This can be related to the protagonist, Holden Caulfield in the J.D. Salinger Bildungsroman, Catcher in the Rye, as an adolescent searching for his purpose in the world. Many literary works explore the struggle of finding one’s identity within society, such as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. The timeless essence of this best…

Rags to Riches: “The Blind Side” Coming from nothing to achieving greatness is a huge accomplishment; however, rising to a national sports star from living homeless in the projects of Memphis, Tennessee is quite another. Micheal Lewis; the author of the true story about Michael Oher shows how the main character faced many struggles throughout his life, including leaving his drug addicted mother behind to scavenge his way from place to place; yet, his message of positivity and his drive and…

The Victorian Era was Queen Victoria’s reign over the British Empire. During this time, there was a clear contrast between the place of males and females. Women were made to act and be a certain way, any other idea pertaining was wrong. These girls were expected to be righteous and good, their needs came after the ones of everyone else and their sole purpose was to serve their families. The men however were deemed superior and were expected to save the damsel in distress. This period is…

The garden party is a short story written by Katherine Mansfield in 1921. This short story is Truncated Bildungsroman that is a young girl who changed her point of view about life through her experience, It is “a story of the growth and maturity of a young idealistic character” (Rich, 2013). The story tells the upper-class family called Sheridans family held garden party in their house and their mother Mrs. Sheridan asks the party’s arrangement for her children to make out themselves as adults,…

Whereas Abeng explores the power of spoken language as a formative tool, Annie John handles how the written language functions to empower the main character, Annie John, to advance her personal growth. Lacking the type of privilege Clare possesses in Abeng, Annie unknowingly opts for using her written language, rather than her spoken language, to shape her personal maturation. One early example of this is when Annie John, upon reading her textbook in school, stumbles across a picture of…

the black community, but too “black” for the white community. In order to create an identity of who they were as a familial community, they first needed to understand how they ended up in Michigan. Milkman’s journey is often seen as a typical bildungsroman, but in actuality his journey symbolizes a coming-of-age for his entire family. Without music, Milkman may have never discovered the origins of his family; the…