Student Question
Is A Little Piece of Ground a bildungsroman? Discuss.
Quick answer:
A Little Piece of Ground can be considered a bildungsroman as it depicts the coming-of-age journey of Karim, a Palestinian teenager. The story showcases Karim's development from a typical teen to someone forced to confront harsh realities under Israeli occupation. While he grows personally and culturally, primarily through adversity, the novel doesn't follow a conventional bildungsroman structure. Ultimately, whether it fits the genre depends on whether Karim is viewed as having fully matured by the story's end.
Quite simply, a bildungsroman is a coming of age story. You can make a case that this is certainly true with the young adult novel A Little Piece of Ground, especially in the character of Karim.
Karim begins the story as a typical egocentric teen. He wants to be with his friends, play sports, and become a soccer star. The main conflict in the story is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, as Karim is a Palestinian under the military control of Israeli forces. It is this conflict that forces his coming of age.
How is this so? Israeli forces destroy Karim's school. They destroy Karim's ability to play sports. They destroy Karim's ability to be with his friends. They destroy his freedom by instituting a curfew. They even try to destroy Karim by wounding him so severely that he is hospitalized! Laird spoke about the truth of the situation in Palestine...
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in this way during an NPR interview:
I was profoundly shocked by what I found, by the real dreadfulness of people's everyday life, the increasing poverty, the harassment, the curfews. And it occurred to me then that it would be a proper subject for a novel to see how children are managing under these circumstances.
How does Karim react to all of his? He reacts by desperately wanting and planning his "little piece of ground" for him and his friends to play soccer. He reacts by keeping his friendship with Joni, a Christian, which represents Karim's great growth as he reaches across the aisle. He reacts through defiance (instead of through peace).
Not have our house flattened by Israeli tanks. ... Not living under occupation. ... Not dead.
Therefore, as you can see, there are some ways that Karim grows; however, there are also some ways that he remains stagnant, representing the stagnation between Israel and Palestine.
References
Discuss A Little Piece of Ground as a bildungsroman.
The principal criteria describing a bildungsroman (coming of age) novel can be identified generally as (1) the presence of a central character that is young/childish, in one way or another and (2) depicts a process wherein that character grows, matures, changes or otherwise comes into adulthood. The question to ask is – Does the story depict a formative process for a central character?
“Bildungsroman is the name affixed to those novels that concentrate on the development or education of a central character” (eNotes).
Elizabeth Laird’s novel, A Little Piece of Ground, will qualify as a bildungsroman if we can say that the story of Karim Adouli meets the above-mentioned criteria.
Karim is, indeed, a child. He grows into a new personal and cultural perspective over the course of the novel. His experiences tear him out of any innocence he may have enjoyed and put him face to face with the difficult realities of life under occupation.
Perhaps problematically, this perspective is informed largely by negative feelings and outright hatred. Yet, on a technical level, the emotional content of the characters changes make little difference as to whether or not the novel can be considered as a bildungsroman.
Is A Little Piece of Ground a conventional or common form of bildungsroman? The answer to this question is probably “no.” But is it an example of a bildungsroman, generally speaking? The answer to this question is seems to be “yes.”
To answer this question for yourself as a reader, you have to decide if Karim has been "formed" or "constructed" into a new version of himself by the novel's end. If he is still "under construction" or still in the process of "coming of age" then you might want to argue that the novel does not truly belong to the category of bildungsroman.