A Comparative Reading of the Postcolonial Pícaro in F. Sionil Jose’s Mass and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger

This paper was originally submitted as a final requirement for the author’s compliance in the course LIT 607: Seminar in Comparative Literature (2017). 

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I. Appropriating and Adapting Genres of the West

 

Perhaps one of the more benign unintended consequences to have emerged from the era of colonization is the appropriation of Western literary forms by writers from formerly colonized regions of the world. This allows them to inject their own native sentiments and leads to new, unexpected ways of rendering these forms. Case in point is the novel. Its “closeness to life in the raw and society in the making” (Maiorino xii) made it the perfect mode to capture folkloric, precolonial ways of looking at the world—views that were gradually eroding as a result of Western hegemony, influence, and education—and reconcile it with a new, postcolonial identity. The epic—a more traditional way of telling a people’s history and a form present among numerous cultures—was relegated by Georg Lukács to obsolescence in favor of the novel. The latter, he claimed, was destined to surpass the former in relevance and purpose in the modern world because “[t]he epic gives form to a totality of life that is rounded from within; the novel seeks, by giving form, to uncover and construct the concealed totality of life” (108).

 

Today, the novel is the form of choice among writers from India, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and “new modalities” (Anjaria 114) of it have emerged, with traits inspired by the distinctness of the region’s decolonization project and/or their quest for a national identity. It is thus not surprising that, in the last two hundred years, we’ve seen the rise of innovative sub-genres like magical realism or social realist narratives that writers strictly adhering to the European tradition could never have imagined.

 

Other times, sub-genres of the novel have seen outright translation into the postcolonial mode. This is especially true of the picaresque novel, whose “intrinsically dogmatic…political portrayal of society” (Ardilla 4) makes it the perfect vehicle to critique the disadvantaged position formerly colonized parts of the world—or the Global South, to use the parlance of numerous critics—have in the current world order.

 

A precise definition or even a taxonomy of the genre has proven quite the challenge to pin down, considering how some literary works employ conventions of the picaresque without wholly or explicitly identifying as such. Critics also tend to disagree on which classic works fall under the picaresque umbrella, so a definitive literary history is difficult to come by. J. A. G. Ardila, however, has managed to narrow down the genre (or mode, or form [will be using these terms interchangeably]) to three core characteristics:

 

(1) A picaresque novel tells the life of its protagonist in order to explain a final situation. (2) A picaresque novel has a satirical purpose and is committed to a social cause. (3) The protagonist of a picaresque novel is a pícaro, a literary character who (a) comes from an infamous family, (b) hence carries a social stigma that conditions his life, (c) struggles to overcome his egregious origins by seeking social ascent, (d) tries many different sorts of employment, although he lives in delinquency, and (e) as a thief, the pícaro exploits his cunning. (4)

 

Ardila, though, is quick to point out that the above enumeration is “extremely restrictive” (5) and thus does not necessarily disqualify works that lack one or two qualities. Nevertheless, we see his points manifest (to varying degrees) in the two postcolonial pícaros to be discussed in this paper: Pepe Samson from F. Sionil Jose’s Mass and Balram Halwai from Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. It bears emphasizing that these two novels do not a hundred percent adhere to the Ardila’s criteria. Mass, for example, is narrated in real time, not from the retrospective of a final situation, and Halwai doesn’t exactly come from an “infamous family,” just a terribly impoverished one. Still, the characters under study meet the minimum requirements of cunning, marginality, moral ambiguity, social stigmatization, and even bookishness, to name a number of traits.

 

Before further discussing the subject novels and their intriguing protagonists, it is important I dedicate a section below to the history of the picaresque novel, especially since the historical conditions from which it saw nascence feel uncannily replicated in our modern neoliberal, grossly unequal era. To add, I feel it would be of equal import for me to differentiate the picaresque novel from another European coming-of-age tradition that has also seen adaptation by many a postcolonial writer, the Bildungsroman.

 

 

II. History of the Picaresque

 

Both Rob Nixon and Giancarlo Maiorino point to the decade between 1550 and 1559 as the years that set the stage for the rise of the picaresque novel. It was the Renaissance in many parts of Europe, and printing technology enabled the circulation of secular texts. In 1554, the first documented picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes saw publication in Spain under a nameless author. According to Maiorino, the picaresque was the indigents’ opportunity to “[counter] the canonical standard of literary and materialist imperialism” (xii) propagated largely by the Renaissance elite, as well as a sharp retort to the wide socioeconomic divide that permeated the period. (Ironically, Nixon points out, Lazarillo de Tormes’s printing coincided with the Golden Age of Spain, when vast amounts of wealth reaped from the colonies in the Americas were accumulated by the crown and aristocracy but failed to trickle down to the majority of Spaniards who remained in poverty [452]).

           

As the gap between the poor and the wealthy widened in the succeeding century, Tina Kuhlisch notes, the number of picaresque novels also increased. Points of reflection of many picaresque novels throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included the “insufficiency of private charity in the face of the great number of disenfranchised” and an increasing fear or crime (356). This “ironic discourse” coupled with the themes of adventure and moral digression allowed for two different readings of the burgeoning genre: the picaresque novel could be read as social criticism, or—given the irreverent tone of its narrator-protagonist—simply as entertainment or diversion, particularly among more privileged classes. Kuhlisch, though, subsequently observed a decline in relevance of the picaresque tradition, at least in its country of origin, toward the end of the seventeenth century.

 

However, as evinced by “postcolonial pícaro” novels, such as those under analysis in this paper, it seems that the picaresque form is seeing renewed relevance today in the global South, as much as it first did in mid-sixteenth-century Spain, primarily because the so-called economic successes enjoyed by countries like the Philippines and India (where Mass and The White Tiger are respectively from) have largely failed to manifest among poorer sectors of these states’ populations. Ironically, both countries have also been classified by many economists as newly industrialized nations (Bozyk 164). We thus see today a mirroring of the economic chasm that plagued sixteenth-century Spain, albeit ours being on a more global scale. Perhaps, then, it is no accident that the pícaro, “a seldom-heard voice who belongs nonetheless to the statistical majority” (Nixon 452), has begun to reappear as well.

 

 

III. The Picaresque and the Bildungsroman: Two Traditions

 

A discussion of the picaresque tradition would not be complete without delving into the type of character from which the genre draws its name. As critics such as Jill Twark have observed, there is some overlap between the picaresque narrative and another coming-of-age, biographical genre, albeit one of Germanic origin and having risen to popularity a century or two later: the Bildungsroman. The term Bildungsroman has proven quite clunky to translate directly into English. (Twark points out that the closest approximation we have is “novel of acculturation” [129], though other possible translations include “novel of formation” or “novel of education,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica online.) The term Bildung loosely translates to “finding oneself and in the process gradually gaining independence from the dominating powers of nature, society, and culture” (Mayer qtd. in Twark 129).

 

While the development of the Bildungsroman’s hero is more holistic (he develops both morally and psychologically), the pícaro is more “static and other-directed,” as well as aimless, to use Peter Freese’s description (Twark 267). He typically pursues a quest for upward mobility (Nixon 452), and hence advances only “the economic situation of the individual [self]” (Khor 61) while leaving his family and peers in the same penury they wallowed in at story’s opening.

 

Compared to the Bildungsroman protagonist, who experiences maturation from established societal norms, the pícaro has a greater tendency to skirt these. He is much wittier, more parasitic, and narrates his tale with sardonic wit and from the perspective of hindsight. He essentially revels in his outsider status, much like how the genre itself is hallmarked by an “outsiderism” that stands opposite to the canonical texts produced by the elite in the genre’s early days (Maiorino xv).

 

The picaresque novel has also spawned several genres since its decline in popularity in Spain. One of these is the maritime picaresque, which Cohen claims Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe “helped launch” (293), with its emphasis on adventure and the freedom of movement, as well as its digression from tales of the nationalistic sort (which proliferated in the nineteenth century, just as collective imaginations of shared national histories began sweeping the globe).

 

Ardila, for his part, goes as far to say that a number of neo-picaresque novels have appeared in the twentieth century. Although most of these novels are not “picaresque” in the strictest sense, considering that they have incorporated elements from other literary genres, they nonetheless help constitute and perpetuate the picaresque myth (6).

 

 

IV. The Novels and Their Pícaros

 

Originally written in Paris in 1976, in the author’s preferred medium that is the English language, the novel Mass caps off F. Sionil Jose’s much lauded historical and political quintet, the Rosales saga. The series spans several years, detailing the lives of two families before and after Philippine independence, and includes several characters. The protagonist/first-person narrator in Mass is Pepe Samson, a provincial adolescent of austere origins from the Luzon town of Cabugawan.

 

As early as the novel’s opening paragraph, where Samson describes himself, we already get a sense of his sardonic and irreverent personality:

 

My name is Samson. I have long hair, but there is nothing symbolic or biblical about it; most people my age just have it as a matter of inclination, and nobody really cares. My long hair is a form of self-expression, of a desire to conform, to be with them. It is a measure of my indifference to remarks, even to Father Jess’s—to which I had countered that Christ had long hair and if God had intended us not to have it, He would not have given the likes of me a shaggy mane. (Jose 1)

 

The novel is peppered with similarly toned remarks all throughout, even as the youthful Samson gradually slips into disillusionment and experiences both heartbreak and violence as events progress. His roguish, recalcitrant qualities, among others, rendered young Samson quite the endearing figure in my imagination, and I couldn’t help but draw similarities between his persona and that of a protagonist from another novel I read just a few months shortly after reading Mass.

 

Published in 2008 and subsequently paving the way for its author to garner the Man Booker Prize that same year, The White Tiger tells the story of Balram Halwai, a former indigent from the Indian countryside town of Laxmanargh. Over the course of seven nights, through a series of memos addressed to Chinese premier Wen Jiabao that diminish in seriousness as the narrative progresses (Khor 53), Halwai (not even his real surname; “Halwai” refers to his caste as a sweet-maker) details his rise from destitute orphan to successful entrepreneur amid India’s economic boom. As with Samson, the language Halwai employs is equal parts witty and cynical, frank but insightful, ironic but also shallow at times, just as you’d expect of a pícaro. Observe, for instance, the manner in which he draws a kinship between his race, the Indian, and that of his addressee, the Chinese:

 

            Out of respect for the love of liberty shown by the Chinese people, and also in the belief that the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, cell phone usage, and drug abuse, I offer to you, free of charge, the truth about Bangalore. (Adiga 3–4)

 

Through Halwai’s story, we see the two sides of India—or to use his terminology, “two countries—two Indias” (215), the Light and the Dark. This metaphor not only allows Halwai a dichotomy to set apart the wealthy (the Light) from the poor (those in the Dark, such as himself and his family), but it also gives him a threshold, a line which he believes, by sheer determination, he can cross.

 

Halwai writes in his first memo: “One fact about India is that you can take almost anything you hear about the country from the prime minister and turn it upside down and then you will have the truth about that thing” (12). This notion of turning things upside down, of flipping something over to reveal the truth, aptly encapsulates the dual nature of India the reader is presented with, and which Halwai succeeds at establishing in his narrative. On the one hand, you have the India that is presented by analysts and the media as this economic powerhouse of the twenty-first century, or as this exotic place where one can find enlightenment by striking a “weird pose in yoga, [smoking] hashish, [or shagging] a sadhu” (236). And then you have the India that is deeply mired in poverty, the India with poor sanitation, understaffed hospitals, and no access to electricity nor running water. It is the India that is left behind, so to say, both in terms of economic prosperity and cultural relevance. As Adiga puts it, this is the India that is “left confused and perplexed” (286).

 

Hence, the socioeconomic conditions of twenty-first century India are not that far removed from those of sixteenth-century Spain, a supposedly prosperous golden age as well that in reality left out many of the common folk. Conditions are ripe then for a pícaro figure to emerge in the literary imagination, albeit one drawn specifically from the current Indian landscape.

 

Just like Halwai, Pepe Samson too critiques the ostensible economic boom of the Philippines that Jose writes about:

 

            So, then, this is how it will be; they talk about modernization, about increase in the gross national product, and they want the bright young minds—honed in the best universities in America—to work and raise this country and these people from the garbage dump of history and up—up to the dizzying heights of air-conditioned bedrooms, flush toilets, and cemented streets. (Jose 240)

 

We see in both Pepe Samson and Balram Halwai the social critique aspect that made the picaresque novel popular in its time. Whereas the picaresque’s first iteration was used by its Spanish writers to mock or criticize the royals, the aristocracy, the clergy, and other powerful institutions, Jose and Adiga appropriate the form to suit postcolonial-era (perhaps even neocolonial) sensibilities. Both authors employ the picaresque tradition to bring out the darker sides of their respective home countries amid the light that seems to overpower the narratives of the poor and the disenfranchised, much the same way as how canonized works during the Renaissance, typically produced by the upper classes, overshadowed the picaresque and other mass-oriented forms of expression.

 

Although Mass and The White Tiger have over three decades between them in terms of publication (again, 1982 and 2008, respectively), this in no way diminishes their comparability. Both novels were written and are set in the postcolonial era—or more particularly, the neocolonialist era, where the influence of wealthier Western powers is still evident, albeit in more subtle forms. Additionally, even if Mass was written during and set in the Marcos regime, a number of social issues it brings up are still just as pervasive now as they were three decades ago. This, ultimately, yields the sad reality that Philippine society has changed little in terms of justiciability in the intervening years.

 

Between Pepe Samson and Balram Halwai, it is the latter who is the more overtly picaresque character. Even if his father, “a poor man…a man of honor and courage” (Adiga 19), is allotted significant mention, his death from tuberculosis, described in detail in the first memo of the novel, leaves Halwai orphaned (his mother had passed away much earlier in the boy’s youth). He subsequently takes on several jobs before finding employ as the driver of Mr. Ashok, a decent but flawed upper-middle-class man.

 

Pepe Samson, on the other hand, although equally provincial as Halwai, is not an orphan. His mother, whom he later learns was a mistress, is still alive, while his father’s death from several years ago casts a long shadow over Samson’s present: “The only times I was really depressed was when I filled out those awful forms which demanded that I name my father and I would put ‘deceased’” (Jose 2). He may not be as poor as Halwai, considering that he can afford to go to college (even if he deems a degree useless for him [19]), and any employment he takes up while in Manila serves merely to augment his funds, but he nevertheless feels a stigma cloaking him, and the absence of a father only exacerbates this. (“But what about the stigma of being a bastard, the jokes I had to endure, the questions I could not answer?” [108])

 

It is in the urban setting—Manila for Pepe Samson and Delhi for Halwai—where both young characters come of age and realize harsh truths about their respective societies.

 

Upon their arrivals in their countries’ capitals, Pepe Samson and Balram Halwai already look upon these cities with a cynical eye. Samson says:

 

RECTO!

 

The jeepney drivers shout it, this name that circumscribes, describes youth, the urban malady and pollution, bakya supermarket at one end which is Divisoria, and vision and corruption—whichever you want to append—at the other. Malacañang. It is this other end, the vision-corruption part which would be the familiar grounds to me for four years. Recto! Rectum of Manila! (Jose 19)

 

The above passage is later punctuated with a hint of optimism, in which Samson proclaims, “when the revolution comes and this Recto, this will be the boulevard of great erudition, it will be the avenue of hope” (19). This suggests that Samson, while harboring aspirations of advancement for himself, is not that individualistic a pícaro. Although he finds a sense of kinship with the character of Don Quixote (“I would follow Don Quixote’s meanderings” [8]), a literary figure many scholars believe to be one of the earliest pícaros, Jose crafts Samson as, initially, a believer in collective effort—a “revolution,” as he puts it. This idealism, however, gradually fades as the narrative goes on, and Pepe Samson is made aware of greater obstacles that are beyond his control: the ultra-conservatism of the Filipino people, the waning nationalism instigated by the Americans, as well as the self-aggrandizing propensities of the wealthier classes.

 

Halwai, on the other hand, is more abrasive and straightforward through and through. Even in his description of Delhi, he cannot escape the dichotomous lens with which he views India:

 

            Delhi…

            The capital of our glorious nation. The seat of Parliament, of the president, of all ministers and prime ministers. The pride of our civic planning. The showcase of the republic.

            That’s what they call it.

            Let a driver tell you the truth. And the truth is that Delhi is a crazy city. (Adiga 98)

 

His emphasis on they is a clear jab at the wealthy, the media, and the macro-institutions that feed the public and the rest of the world with optimistic news about India. Halwai easily dismisses these as “crap” (249); therefore, making plain his disdain for the elite—a quality he shares with Pepe Samson.

 

True to the rebellious nature of the pícaro, both protagonists exhibit an aversion or mistrust of religion, which is, needless to say, quite the powerful force in predominantly Catholic Philippines and Hindu-majority India. Pepe Samson says that he “had never been religious” (Jose 85), although he does take a liking to the religious holidays and certain religious practices such as the dawn Christmas mass. Samson, however, differs from the traditional Catholic Filipino view of God and sees the Christian deity as one who is “no arbiter of right or wrong” (85). He refuses to adhere to the notion of a God who decides things happen, regardless of how awful, for the best:

 

…it would seem that He did not care…He did not reward virtue; it was the scheming and the dastardly strong who lived happily ever after. Babies without sin die and so do mothers who are poor and cannot afford medicine or expensive doctors. (85)

 

Halway, however, goes as far as to compare gods to politicians, referring to the combined 36,000,004 gods that Hindu, Muslim, and Christian Indians worship as asses that need to be kissed (Adiga 6): “It’s true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work—much like our politicians—and yet keep winning reelection to their golden thrones in heaven year after year” (6). He does sardonically proclaim, though, that he does not disrespect these deities in any way, before emphasizing that India is a place where “it pays to play it both ways: the Indian entrepreneur has to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, at the same time” (6).

 

While more religious readers may take offense at Samson’s and Halwai’s religious views, their digressive attitudes only further highlight their picaresque qualities. Religion, however wholesome or altruistic a facet of life it may appear, is not without its flaws and hypocrisies, and these two protagonists help us see that.

 

Just like your typical pícaro, both characters share a superficial bookishness that intends to parody their societies’ unwillingness or inability to read signs and symbols at deeper levels. They are also exposed to characters from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Halwai, for his part, is exposed to the opulence and excess of the rich and upper middle-class primarily through Mr. Ashok, Pinky Madame, and the establishments they frequent, such as condominiums and malls. He is, however, shut out of these places by virtue of his socioeconomic standing and occupation. He is only permitted to catch a glimpse from the peripheries, which further hammers home his outsider status, his marginality. Instead of residing in the same condo unit as his employer, Halwai is given a cramped, stuffy, and roach-infested space in the building’s basement, where all the other servants reside. At the mall, he is told to wait by the car and gets the message that people of his sort are not welcome there when he spots one of the guards scaring off an indigent who attempts entry. Later, however, Halwai does manage access to these forbidden areas—by gaining the trust of Mr. Ashok, and through his shrewdness in procuring a clean shirt and a pair of shoes. When he does manage entry into these establishments, there is still an unease bubbling within him—a manifestation of the stigma attached to his socioeconomic status.

 

Because he is exposed to all this wealth, Halwai ultimately pines to move up the social ladder for himself. Unlike Samson, who is exposed to a greater range of socioeconomic levels and ends up more nationalistic in his aspirations, Halwai fails to see through the neoliberal veil that has made India what it is. He wants nothing less than being in the Light and to be in the favor of, say, government and police officials. As Lena Khor posits, Halwai’s only way to break out of the rooster coup is for him to “embrace” neoliberal globalization (48). And this is quite evident in his first step toward economic success: he provides a transport service for Bangalore call center agents—an occupation in India that would not have existed at the scale that it operates were it not for neoliberalism and globalization.

 

Samson is, arguably, a nobler figure. Although he recognizes early on that there is nothing noble in being poor (Jose 29) and also aspires for upward mobility himself as he tries his hand at various forms of employment, he learns much through his numerous interactions with people from different strata of society. (He even enters into a romantic relationship with two women from two opposing worlds: Lucy, the Visayan live-in maid of his aunt and uncle’s Manila household; and Betsy, an upper middle-class mestiza who shares his outrage for the injustices pervading Philippine society.)

 

Samson does not economically prosper by story’s end in the same way that Halwai does, but he is nevertheless rendered a fulfilled but otherwise lonely figure—a mixed bag, so to say. Although his promise to venture away from Fr. Jess’s ministry and “go very far without tiring” (256) is indicative of him not having achieved the same level of comfort as Halwai, he has nevertheless achieved Maiorino’s “better condition of life” (xxii) by finally finding a vocation for his erstwhile roguish self. The persistence of poverty and injustice in Philippine society both at the end of the narrative and well into today is proof that Samson’s work has yet to be fully accomplished (if it will ever be).

 

For Halwai, though, he does achieve the traditional picaresque ending of economic success, but it comes at great personal cost. In addition to the feelings of wariness that plague him in the wake of Mr. Ashok’s murder, Halwai is also left wondering about the fate of his family back in Laxmanargh, whom he suspects was massacred by the wealthy landlords as a form of reprisal for Ashok’s death. His only companion may be his young relative, Dharam, but even he grows suspicious of Halwai as the days carry on. His pondering over the possibility of fathering children serves to not only remind us of his monetary stability but also as a symbol of his innate loneliness. Halwai has therefore achieved what Maiorino calls “the instability of his buena fortuna” (xxii).

 

 

V. Conclusion

 

Lukács once deemed the European novel “the literary form proper to an alienated modern social life, in a world no longer suffused with meaning or complete unto itself as was the world of the epic” (104). Perhaps this assertion also rings true for the postcolonial novel.

 

With much of the Global South still fractured from over five centuries of colonialism, and still significantly dependent on neocolonial dynamics, it has become a challenge for citizens of these parts of the world to forge a distinct national identity amid Western-imposed notions of development. In the case of both the Philippines and India, for example, both Anglophone nation-states, the English language is held in high esteem, holding status as the de facto language in the areas of business, law, the academe, and others. Meanwhile, native languages—while still widely spoken among their respective populaces—have been pushed to the side as a result of English’s placeholder as an institutional language.

 

In addition, while much of the West has lauded the Global South for the economic progress experienced by many such countries in recent years—a criteria based primarily on what Naomi Klein has called the “three pillars of neoliberalism” (privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes) (72–73)—the truth on the ground is that a lot of those with lower socioeconomic standing have remained left behind.

 

One conundrum facing these formerly colonized nations then is, how can they progress economically but at the same time maintain a distinct identity and retain their native values in the face of Western-imposed globalization and neoliberal capitalism? This is where the novel as a literary form may play a pivotal role.

 

As Lukács says:

 

            Great epic literature is never the result of men forgetting their enslavement in the lively play of a liberated imagination or in tranquil retirement to happy isles not to be found in the map of this world of trivial attachment. In times to which such lightness is no longer given, verse is banished from the great epic, or else it transforms itself, unexpectedly and unintentionally, into lyric verse. Only prose can then encompass the suffering and the laurels, the struggle and the crown, with equal power; only its unfettered plasticity and its non-rhythmic rigour can, with equal power, embrace the fetters and the freedom, the given heaviness and the conquered lightness of a world henceforth immanently radiant with found meaning. (84)

 

With the its use of straightforward prose language and its inherent ability to probe into the lives of the marginalized and voiceless, the novel provides its readership unparalleled and unobscured insight into matters that, under most circumstances, wouldn’t be called into question—for instance, optimistic projections made by media outlets regarding a country’s supposed economic success, or the seemingly convincing pronouncements of a head of state.    

 

Much like the hero of the novel, the citizens of the previously colonized world are “seekers” (Lukács 85), in search of an identity and a destiny that is genuinely our own, one that is not hampered in any way by greater forces. The pícaro, therefore, a product of Western imaginings, is a paradoxical figure with characteristics we can examine and perhaps even emulate. His perspicacity, his probity, his insightfulness, his knack for criticizing the superficial and the blatantly false—these are the qualities that would serve us well in our journey. The self-centeredness, the obsession for upward mobility at the expense of others, on the other hand—these we will be better off dispensing with.

           

 

Works Cited

 

Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger. Free Press, 2008.

 

Anjaria, Ulka. “Realist Hieroglyphics: Aravind Adiga and the New Social Novel.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 61, no. 1, 2015, pp. 115–137.

 

Ardila, J. A. G. “Introduction: Transnational Picaresque.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 4, 2010, pp. 1–11.

 

Cohen, Margaret. “The Right to Mobility in Adventure Fiction.” Novel, vol. 42, no. 2, 2009, pp. 290–296. ProQuest Central.

 

Jose, F. Sionil. Mass. Solidaridad, 1983.

 

Khor, Lena. “Can the Subaltern Right Wrongs?: Human Rights and the Development in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger.” South Central Review, vol. 29, no. 1, ser. 2, 2012, pp. 41–67.

 

Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Simon & Schuster, 2014.

 

Kuhlisch, Tina. Review of Discourses of Poverty: Social Reform and the Picaresque Novel in Early Modern Spain. 1999, pp. 355–361.

 

Lukács, George. “The Epic and the Novel.” Eds. David Damrosch, Natalie Melas, Mbongiseni   Buthelezi. The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature. Princeton University Press, 2009.

 

Maiorino, Giancarlo. “Introduction: Renaissance Marginalities.” Ed. Giancarlo Maiorino. The Picaresque: Tradition and Displacement. University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

 

Nixon, Rob. “Neoliberalism, Slow Violence, and the Environmental Picaresque.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 55, no. 3, 2009, pp. 443–467.

 

Twark, Jill E. Humor, Satire, and Identity: Eastern German Literature in the 1990s. Walter de Gruyter, 2007. Google Books.

 

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Bildungsroman.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 19 May 2017, www.britannica.com/art/bildungsroman.