Waiting for a Bildungsroman

Have you ever read a Bildungsroman? I am sure you have, whether it was in English or Sinhala. A Bildungsroman is a coming-of-age novel. In it, the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a character, usually the protagonist. The genre arose during the German Enlightenment. The German term Bildungsroman was coined by Johann Carl Simon Morgenstern in 1820.

A Bildungsroman novel typically follows a young character from innocence to self-awareness and emotional development. My favourite example for a Bildungsroman is Martin Wickramasingha’s ‘Madol Duwa’. Upali Giniwella and his servant boy Jinna end up on an island having run away from his father and stepmother. There they learn to live on their own, battle various intruders, and eventually become successful businessmen selling vegetables in the area.

Although many of Bildungsroman novels follow a basic template, there can be much individuation. The framework usually begins with the introduction of a smart and emotionally sensitive young person at home who then exits into the world where he or she faces conflicts and tests of character before discovering a proper place in the larger scheme of things.

In Madol Duwa, Wickramasinghe presents a stretch of incidents which cause Upali and Jinna to run away from their home. Very often the main character must journey back to the home to prove his worth by showing he was capable of maturity.

Such as Upali, the young hero gets the opportunity to visit his home as a young man and help his ill father and step mother. Some novels end more tragically with the death of the hero, sometimes even before he is able fulfil his great promise.

Bildungsroman novels might well be said to focus on the issue of the education of the protagonist, but that is not meant to imply traditional schooling. At this point the popular novels ‘Pichcha Mala’ and ‘Araliya Mal Aramaya’ of veteran writer Jayasena Jayakody come to my mind. The protagonist of both novels is Rahula, a Buddhist monk. Novels depict how Rev.

Rahula exists in today’s tumultuous society. While he gets free from all the worldly desires, he manages to make free the others who have highly involved with them. Eventually people who went against Rev Rahula become more mature minded and mentally advanced individuals.

In keeping with the theme of education, it is very rare for a protagonist in a Bildungsroman novel to be unintelligent. He may be naïve and uninformed, but he will almost certainly have a sharp mind, and usually a definite ability.

A bildungsroman is literally and figuratively a novel about the development of the self. The protagonist must work his way through a confusing maze that offers alternative choices at every turn; it is part of the theme that he must gradually achieve maturity as a result of having made bad choices, but learning from them.

Until the postmodern era of this kind of novel, the world that was portrayed in them generally was assumed to be filled with universal truths. Before Modernism, that typically meant achieving and accepting the ideal of middle class virtues. Modernism exploded that and introduced the rejection of those very same values.

In Sri Lankan literary canon, Bildungsroman is described in other words like ‘adventure novel’ or categorized under children’s literature. Up to my knowledge this stream of literature is not taught in Sri Lankan Universities under Sinhala or English degree courses. Reading high grade literature is not a best practice in achieving maturity in Sri Lanka. Instead people flock around TVs watching birth of stars. They vote to ‘develop’ other individuals other than developing themselves.

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