Bildungsroman

A Bildungsroman, recounts the psychological or moral development of its protagonist from youth to maturity. One pivotal moment in my life was when my cousin died. I was eleven years old, I had someone close to me die before. When I heard that my thirteen year old cousin had cancer I took it decently well. Yea I was sad, but I thought there is no way he could not of conquered it. He had a good fight with it for over a year and a half he beat it once but it came back. They had tried everything,…

Bildungsroman stems from the German “bildung”, which means education, formation, or growth, and “roman”, which means novel. A typical bildungsroman is set in the life of a young protagonist who is distinct from the majority in a socially undesirable way, and follows them through their journey to assimilation into mainstream society and their eventual acceptance of the rules and constructs society has in place for them. To categorize Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave…

of such a text are naive” (Karafilis 63). Others consider that there is any Bildungsroman written in English. However, it still remains one of the most successful in the literary studies worldwide. Known for its early characteristics of being male, middle-class, white, and European, the Bildungsroman has undergone transformations, in different periods. Since the late twentieth century, the construction of the Bildungsroman genre has been changing with the new cultural, social and gender roles.…

Bradley Deane writes, “As the development, narrative of the Bildungsroman was displaced by the episodic adventure tale, the decisive question of successful manliness was no longer moral growth, but conduct in a limitless series of competitive trials,” (Masculinity and the New Imperialism). Deane relates to Jim’s maturation because he is forced to become a new person, kill a human to save his own life, and questions why situations happen. Deane shows that Jim was put through immensely competitive…

In his bildungsroman Feed, M. T. Anderson presents a nightmare of the future in which the omnipresent feed, a brain implant providing access to the internet, has dominated human minds with an escape in a virtual reality where advertising, artifice, and pleasure-seeking abound. In this world of surplus and connection, there is an ironic and tragic scarcity in the prevalence of meaningful human relationships. This is seen in the life of protagonist Titus, an average teenager with a fixed esteem…

story takes places in Maycomb County, Alabama in the 1930’s. This story shows the main character, Scout Finch gradually growing up. Her father Atticus, has different views than the majority of other people in this time period. This makes this a bildungsroman novel. Within To Kill a Mockingbird, several life changing events and pieces of advice from Atticus, lead Jem and Scout Finch to become morally educated. One of the first times when Atticus gives Scout advice is when she doesn’t want to go…

A bildungsroman is a novel about the coming of age, with the character experiencing difficulties which allow them to gradually gain maturity. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor slowly starts realizing that his family is dependent on him and that is something he does not want to accept. Through a series of events which contribute to the overall growth of the character, Gregor gains self realization, ending in his death. The Metamorphosis is an example of a bildungsroman, emphasizing the power of money…

troubling, yet rewarding period of time, and in the novel “The Catcher in the Rye”, by J.D. Salinger, the main character Holden Caulfield experiences all of this within a span of five days. “The Catcher in the Rye” is quite simply the epitome of a bildungsroman, or a coming of age novel. It is the story of a teenage boy grieving over the death of his younger brother and coming to terms with growing up. His obsession with purity and his…

A Bildungsroman Book The novel, Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens fits into many genres, one of which is called bildungsroman. A bildungsroman is a German genre which can be described as a coming of age novel where the young main character develops and grows throughout the book. In this story the main character Pip starts out as a young boy and finishes a married man, the bildungsroman genre is used by Dickens to convey the growth, mentally and physically, in not only Pip through his life…

The novel Spies bildungsroman published in 2002 by the the British author Michael Frayn. The novel is based on the fictional story of a Second-World-War imaginary-espionage carried out by two boys, one of which is Stephen, the protagonist of the novel. As the story begins Stephen is portrayed as an old man whose sense of smell provokes vague memories of his childhood. In an attempt to solidify his memories, he travels to his childhood home in a suburban area of London and in a nostalgic manner…