Growing up in the United States: the 20th-century bildungsroman, from The Catcher in the Rye to Another Brooklyn

This BA thesis on Anglo-American literature focuses on the phenomenon of the Bildungsroman in the United States. Of German origins, the Bildungsroman is the novel of formation which, during the 2 centuries of its existence, has almost exclusively dealt with the narration of white, middle-class young boys, both as regards the European tradition that the American one. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate through the analysis of two different novels of formation how the Bildungsroman is a dynamic genre which adapts itself depending on the gender, the culture, and the ethnicity of the main character of the novel, contrary to initial misbelieves. The two novels called into question are both set in the 20th century but 20 years apart and present numerous different characteristics, starting from the gender of the two protagonists to their cultural background: J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye narrates a three-day adventure experienced by a white, bourgeois sixteen year old named Holden, while Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn recounts August’s process of becoming a woman, from the time in which she becomes motherless and moves to Brooklyn where for the first time she experiences racial discrimination, to the one she becomes aware of her identity and accomplishes her maturation progress.