The Bildungsroman and Pips Great Expectations Essay -- Great Expectat

On the surface, Great Expectations appears to be simply the accounting of run into from his early childhood to his early adulthood, and a recollection of the events and people that touch encounters throughout his life. In other words, it is a well written story of a young mans life growing up in England in the early nineteenth century. At first glance, it may appear this way, an fire narrative of youth, love, success and failure, all of which are the makings of an entertaining brisk. However, Great Expectations is a great deal more. Pips story is not simply a recollection of the events of his prehistoric. The recollection of his past is burning(prenominal) in that it is essential in his teaching throughout the novel, until the very(prenominal) end. The experiences that Pip has as a young boy are most-valuable in his maturation into young adulthood. These elements are crucial to the structure and development of Great Expectations Pips maturation and development from chil d to man are important characteristics of the literary genre to which Great Expectations belongs. In structure, Pips story, Great Expectations, is a Bildungsroman, a novel of development. The Bildungsroman traces the development of a protagonist from his early beginnings--from his education to his first infer into the big city--following his experiences there, and his ultimate self-knowledge and maturation. Upon the further examination of the characteristics of the Bildungsroman as presented here it is give the sack that Great Expectations, in part, conforms to the general characteristics of the English Bildungsroman. However, there are aspects of this genre from which daemon departs in Great Expectations. It is these departures that speak to what is most important in Pips development, what ultimately ma... ...ates hellion rejection of the middle class value of marriage and success, the values celebrated and elevated by the handed-down, middle class genre of the Bildungsroman . Dickens believed that basic moral values such as generosity and unselfishness were to be elevated that the material world was irrelevant to a mans worth. Dickens still creates a novel of development - a Bildungsroman - but the position that Pips development is complete only in Dickens rebuff of many of the traditional traits of the Bildungsroman shows what Dickens believed truly made a gentleman goodness. Works Cited Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. eon of Youth The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Cambridge Harvard UP, 1974. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Janice Carlisle. Boston Bedford, 1996. Kaplan, Fred. Dickens A Biography. rude(a) York Morrow, 1988.