Canada as a Novel of Development or Coming-of-Age Story

Dell eventually becomes a high school English teacher, and the books that he teaches his students (such as The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway) all feature young men coming of age and whose plights echo Dell’s own adolescence, and he recycles them for himself and his students in a continuous attempt to understand his own riddled past. Dell’s own experiences, violent though they may be, nonetheless sculpt him into the sensitive and thoughtful man he becomes as an adult.

While all adolescents experience troubling times, personal insecurities, and outside threats, Dell in no way enjoys the usual and familiar trappings of teenage years. Rather than attending high school, hanging out with peers, going to the prom, and having a minimum...