Paper Summary:

This paper examines two great works, "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens and "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, as novels that fall under the Bildungsroman genre, which is a genre of novel that deals with the growth of the protagonist. The paper explains that the Bildungsroman novel chronicles the life of the hero from childhood to adulthood and the conflict that he meets and resolves on his way to wisdom. The paper then points out that some novels come under the umbrella of Bildungsroman but may contain few deviations such as Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" and Dickens' "Great Expectations". The paper also looks at how compared to "A Clockwork Orange", "Great Expectations" is certainly a more conformist form of Bildungsroman but the one place where it deviates from tradition is the choice of narrator. The paper analyzes each novel in relation to Bildungsroman, and concludes that both novels are masterpieces in their own right, but Dickens's work is a better example of a true English Bildungsroman than Burgess' work.

From the Paper:

"Dickens has used an adult voice to narrate the experiences of a child which is starkly different from other examples of the genre where narrator is either a third person or is the protagonist himself who grows with the novel. Buckley, in his book, Seasons of Youth explains the origin of Bildungsroman and its three distinct categories. He further adds that English Bildungsroman tradition was different from that of German's since the former was "in its broadest sense . . . a convenient synonym for the novel of youth or apprenticeship" (13). Buckley's intensive research indicates that English bildungsroman was not always completely autobiographical."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern British Novel. London: Penguin, 1993.
• Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974.
• Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. London: Penguin, 1996.
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, ed. Margaret Cardwell (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1993)
• Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography. New York: Morrow, 1988.

Visitors who viewed this Book Review also liked these:

• Analytical Essay # 5841 : "A Clockwork Orange"
• Analytical Essay # 59490 : "A Clockwork Orange"
• Book Review # 111465 : "Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: