The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is Mordecai Richler’s most popular and critically acclaimed work of fiction, written early in his career. Upon its publication in 1959, the novel created a sensation in Canada’s literary world because of its explicit language, controversial thematic content, and hilarious, even bawdy, form of satire. At the time, the work was reviled as coarse and cynical, but it was praised as well for rejuvenating the Canadian comic novel. In terms of Richler’s literary career and in the development of Canadian literature the book is considered a seminal work for its examination of aspects of Jewish life that are a source of value and a focus of trenchant criticism.

The novel is divided into four parts and traces Duddy’s transition into independent adulthood over a period of several years. Except for one flashback, the narrative is linear and uncomplicated and includes several set pieces which detail specific events that become the targets of Richler’s satire.

In many ways, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz embodies the major concerns that Richler had focused upon throughout his writing career. He wished to recapture a truthful vision of his past, especially his youth in the St. Urbain community. He also attempted to make a case for the ostensibly unsympathetic person. Finally, Richler had regarded the moral basis of his works as the most important aspect of his task as a writer, and he had strived to use his skill as a satirist for this purpose.

Richler uses a well-known form of fiction, the bildungsroman (novel of formation) to trace Duddy’s development from adolescence to adulthood and adapts this genre to illustrate how the boy’s social and physical environments mold his character, especially his moral development. In the St. Urbain Jewish ghetto, family, money (and its antithesis—poverty), and politics are important influences on the boy’s life. Thus, the characters who influence Duddy most intensely are evaluated in these terms and have either negative or positive effects on his progress toward maturation. In this respect, his family plays a crucial role in his early life. His grandfather Simcha reinforces Duddy’s sense of family in a positive way, whereas his father, Max, proposes a negative model of making money through his idolization of the local gangster, Jerry (the Boy Wonder) Dingleman. Once Duddy leaves St. Urbain, even the positive influence exerted by characters such as Yvette and Virgil cannot sufficiently redirect the boy’s moral outlook.

Richler portrays Duddy’s character development and fate in terms of a divided nature and thus maintains a level of sympathy for his protagonist even when he acts reprehensibly. In the middle of episodes where he becomes a grasping hustler, emulating the Boy Wonder, Duddy can also rescue and help relatives in his role as a responsible and devoted family man. By describing how the boy is ridiculed by his own family, persecuted at school, and harassed at the resort by snobbish fellow waiters, Richler carefully lays the groundwork for an understanding of the callousness and ruthlessness demonstrated by Duddy in his later life.

Guiding much of the direction of Duddy’s apprenticeship is the touchy issue of the relations between Jews and goys—a topic Richler courageously thrusts before his readers whether they are prepared or not for such an exploration. The trenchant satire he uses to target both the Jewish and the goy characters in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz underscores the truth that villainy, stupidity and cruelty are endemic to all races, ethnicities, and nationalities. With his relentless criticism of life in the Montreal Jewish ghetto, and with his descriptions of anti-Semitism as an attitude between Jews themselves as well as between Jew and goy, Richler was often described as a self-hating Jew by critics who were outraged by his honesty. Ultimately, the humor, complexity, and truth of his portrayals in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz won for him wide audiences and critical approval that acknowledged the importance of the work in broadening the language and subject matter of the Canadian novel.