Bildungsroman was my favorite word. My high school English teacher taught it to me.
It’s a genre of books that captures the greatest literary characters such as Holden Caulfield, Scout Finch, Harry Potter, Charlie Bucket, and Luke Skywalker.
Bildungsroman is German and translates to “novel of education” or “novel of formation.”
In common speak, it’s a type of coming-of-age story wherein a young character experiences growth.
I was intrigued by this word as a youth as I was excited about defining who I was to become as a mature adult.
I was on a quest for who that person would be.
Perhaps the world’s intrigue with bildungsroman stories is that everyone is on a journey to experience, learn, grow, and mature. That’s life.
In these characters, we see a part of ourselves.
This compound word contains “Roman” which means novel, and we too can make up the story as we go along, only if we believe we can control our destiny.
We are all the hero of our own story.
As an adult, I realized that a bildungsroman is not about youth becoming an adult, it is about a life-long journey.
Interesting 🤔