Rough Paper #2: Literary Apprenticeships

“You people think I not a man, eh? My father had eight children. I is his son. I have ten. I better than all of you put together” (“The Pyrotechnicist”).

INTRO: Both Miguel Street and Botchan are “bildungsroman” (education novels) or coming-of-age novels about the education and maturation of a young man. While the Narrator in Miguel Street is more subtle than the comical blunders of Botchan, we still see him watching, thinking, and growing behind the scenes of each story. In a traditional coming-of-age novel in England, the hero would learn to become a moral and educated man by the end of the story (and probably married to boot). But these are hardly ordinary novels, and all of them take place very far from England.

PROMPT: For your second rough paper, I want you to discuss how each book subverts the typical ‘bildungsroman’ model.  Clearly neither Soseki nor Naipaul was interested in writing a paint-by-numbers story. Instead, they wanted to use the basic template of a bildungsroman to do something else—or to suggest why this model doesn’t work in ‘real’ life. As you write, consider SOME of the following ideas:

• What lessons do the heroes learn (or incorrectly learn) during their stories?
• Who are their role models? Who are their enemies? Why is this important?
• Is the author sympathetic to our heroes? Or are they something satirizing or outright mocking them?
• How do other characters in the stories view the heroes and their education? Are they impressed by them? Or disgusted?
• How do they learn to define manhood (since both are men) through the stories and chapters of each work? What do they accept, and what do they reject?
• Does each hero get a ‘career’ by the end? Is it their “chosen calling”? Or do they settle for something “good enough”?
• Do the heroes receive a universal education…or is it specific to their respective countries/cultures?

REQUIREMENTS

• Page numbers are up to you; it’s a rough paper, so you decide how much is enough (but try to avoid saying too little)
• Quote from both books: don’t simply summarize or paraphrase, and please don’t give us plot summary. Analyze the ideas and language of the stories.
• Try to show connections between the books, even when they don’t agree with one another
• Due Monday, November 16^th for Wednesday Classes
• Due Wednesday, November 18^th for Monday Classes