Blue Boy (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Jean Giono
- First Published: 1932
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Bildungsroman
- Time of Work: c.1900-1914
- Setting: The Provence region of France
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Children, Parents and children, France or French people, Nature, Music or musicians, 1910’s, Fathers, Tutors or tutoring
- Locales: Provence, France
Characters Discussed
Jean (zhahn), the Blue Boy, a boy of about seven when the story opens. He grows to maturity by the end of the book, when he joins the French army in 1914. Jean lives with his mother and father in the Provençal hills at the Italian border. He is the narrator of this fictionalized autobiography, in which he recounts incidents in his own life and the lives of those around him from a boy’s point of view, observing grief, sickness, death, and cruelty, as well as joy and delight. An impressionable, imaginative, solitary child, he spends hours watching people...
[The entire page is 669 words long]
