Recently, several critics, including George Landow, Janet Larson, and Dennis Walder, have noted that an awareness of religious images common among readers in nineteenth century England is beneficial for gaining a more complete understanding of many works from the period. Landow argues in Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows that these often over-looked religious images are important for "When we modern readers fail to recognize allusions to such [religious] typology, we deprive many Victorian works of a large part of their context" (Landow 3). Landow's observations are especially applicable to Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield.
Dennis Walder in Dickens and Religion points out that Dickens was not adverse to the connection of Christian themes and patterns to his work. In a letter to Reverend Macrae, Dickens relates his social consciousness to a religious awareness: "All my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament, all my social abuses are shown as departures from its spirit" (Qtd. in Walder 1).
A specific example in David Copperfield of Dickens using a popular biblical image occurs when he has David describe seeing a stray sheep while sitting in church. Immediately David comments "I don't mean a sinner, but mutton." 1 This small bit of word play demonstrates that Dickens had little doubt--especially in a church setting--that the image of a lost lamb would bring to his readers' minds the allegorical use in the Bible of sheep to describe the lost condition of humanity in need of salvation, a salvation offered by Christ who is called in the New Testament (as well as depicted in many Victorian paintings) as "The Good Shepherd." Obviously Dickens and many in his audience shared a common store-house of biblical images and religious types now often lost to contemporary readers. Reminding ourselves of these types and themes helps to explain some of the difficulties modern critics have had with David Copperfield, and it also helps to expand the reader's appreciation for Dickens' art.
A re-reading of David Copperfield suggests that within David's narrative exists a complex interweaving of the Christian cycle of "loss and reclamation," involving both major and minor characters. An understanding of how this pattern works and what the ramifications are for David, the novel's speaker, if the cycle is a valid portrayal of reality adds to the unification of the novel, brings together the story-line of Little Em'ly with a host of minor characters, illuminates the experiences in David's own life, and suggests at least one possible explanation of why David the adult novelist is recreating the events of his life in the document which forms the novel.
A quick look at the nature and development of religious beliefs in nineteenth century Britain discloses a panorama of almost befuddling change, thanks in part to historical events like Lyell's geological discovers and Darwin's publications of his theories, as well as the continued formation of new denominations, religious institutions, and missionary societies. To review the wide variety of beliefs represented in these changes would be an extensive study in itself. Fortunately scholars like Walder, Kitson Clark, and Larson have already done this.
In brief, they have demonstrated that while many individual Victorians held all manner of doctrines, the vast majority of Britain's Victorian populace nevertheless still clung to a general set of "Christian" beliefs and assumptions, and this audience seems to be the one Dickens was aiming at in his novels. G. KitsonClark emphasizes the quality of this more general religious attitude when, after noting the "extremely interesting intellectual problems" raised by "remarkable men" within the nineteenth century, he writes that viewed from, so to speak, more nearly the ground level of the ordinary, not very intelligent, and not very erudite human being the scene changes, the intellectual issues raised--the problems propounded by biblical criticism or the question of the whereabouts of authority in religion or even the challenge of evolution--fade into the background. . . (Kitson Clark 147) 2
Similarly, Walder, building on this observation, argues that while Dickens "was aware of what stirred thinkers of his time, particularly radical unorthodox Christians," it was not his intention to "write for those who aspired to the subtlety and abstraction of Wiseman, Gorham and the rest, any more than he approved of their interest in theoretical questions" (2). Thus, certainly Janet Larson is correct to emphasize in her Dickens and the Broken Scripture that Dickens "used the Bible in his fiction to clarify the moral outlines of his `parables'" for "by invoking the Book appealed to by all parties," he could then strengthen "his relation with a wide Victorian audience" (4).
For effect, then, Dickens expressed religious ideas not so much by overt statements of faith as by common denominators which he was fairly certain would be agreed upon by most of his readers. And Walder clarifies how this works when he describes Dickens' use of the hope for some type of resurrection from death in The Old Curiosity Shop:
Dickens expresses an accepted Christian belief, by drawing on and reinforcing the common stock of literary and scriptural associations. To grasp this is to grasp one of the basic principles of his method. His beliefs are rarely explicit; they are characteristically embodied in the texture of the work. (78 Emphasis Mine)
With this in mind it certainly becomes valid and important to examine religious images in David Copperfield without looking in detail at the vast diversity of religious opinion concerning particular theological points which were being advanced, developed, and debated over so extensively in Dickens' day.
When looking at religious typology in David Copperfield, it is natural to wonder what the author believed himself. Janet Larson notes that Dickens' "achieved in his own time the stature of a religious figure whose works. . .were compared with Holy Scripture" (4). Certainly, Dickens frequently uses religious imagery. And certainly many of his own comments (some of which will be quoted later) suggest some type of trust in a guiding providence. He felt the life and teachings of Christ important enough to present it to his children in a simplified version published years after his death as The Life of Our Lord. And toward the very end of his own life, when his son, Edward (Plorn) Dickens, was about to leave for Australia, he wrote "I put a New Testament among your books, for the very same reasons, and with the very same hopes that made me write an easy account of it for you, when you were a little child" (Qtd. in Johnson 551). In spite of this, as Walder points out, many "Christians" in Dickens' day did not know what to make of the author's faith:
In his own time Dickens could not have failed to notice the impact of his beliefs--or supposed lack of them--upon committed readers, ecstatically welcomed as he was by liberal Christians, especially in America, and reviled by the more evangelical wing of the faith. (5) 3 And Forster while maintaining the safety of Dickens' belief, rather ambiguously refers to it as being characterized by a "depth of sentiment rather than clearness of faith" (ii, 147).
The cause of this ambivalence can certainly be traced in part to the very diverse nature of Christian belief in the nineteenth century. However, part of the enigma surrounding Dickens' faith can be also traced to the author himself. For example, in a letter written to John Makeham, who had complained about what he had seen as irreverence in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens' answer, meant to assure, actually teases with possible implications. The letter, described in the introduction of The Life of Our Lord, as "perhaps the last words written by Dickens," contains this paragraph:
What can be seen in this letter, and in the many religions references found in Dickens' own words and in his works, is a familiarity with Christian images, types, and themes as they had uniquely developed in Victorian Britain which allowed him a powerful tool with which to communicate with his audience. However, as we have seen, what is far more important for this study of Dickens' use of the theme of loss and reclamation in David Copperfield is an acknowledgment that Dickens understood and employed what was generally recognized as religious typology in his novels in order to capture a large readership.
One of the basic concepts of Christianity centers on the idea of humanity's loss and reclamation. In the
Britain of Dickens' day, however, the general religious assumption--because of the unique development of the
protestant movement within that nation--had come to
emphasize the role of the individual within a greater, cosmic, Christian world view. There was an assurance of the importance of providential concern for the
reclamation of each person who walked the face of the Earth. Certainly Dickens was aware of this belief held by many in audience since it was so extensive.
In his helpful book From Pickwick to Dombey, Steven Marcus argues for both the individual quality of the
general Victorian faith held especially in Dickens' time--as well as the broad extent of its influence:
By the time that Dickens came of age the great renewal of personal religion which had begun in the second half of the eighteenth century had largely succeeded in altering the moral character of English society and had imposed upon all classes the obligation of belief in principled conduct--in piety, respectability and philanthropy. . .[This personal faith] remained the single most powerful moral influence in Victorian society. . .(68-69)
This concept of personal faith encouraged the wide-spread acceptance by every man or woman of
experiencing
what Walder calls "a sense of [a] Providential guiding hand. . ." (8). Even Dickens when
describing the lowest
point of his youth, notes that "but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been. . .a little robber or
vagabond" (Qtd. in Forster i, 57 Emphasis Mine). Such concerns with God's personal guidance also
brought new life in the Victorian period to the popular eighteenth century genre cited by Walder as the "spiritual biography" which dealt specifically with "the
regeneration of the individual soul" (114). Thus, Dickens certainly must have been aware of the concept
widely held by his audience that the experience of individual lives could be seen as set pieces of the
workings of grace.
V
Another unique quality of Britain's general religious consciousness was the tendency of some readers to find allegorical elements even in texts which did not function primarily on an allegorical level. Thus within any narrative, different characters could fulfill the roles of certain types--personages who in their actions execute recognizable functions relating to the working out of salvation described in scripture. This tendency sprang from the way many read the Bible which was itself influenced in part by the enduring popularity of Pilgrim's Progress.
In the Bible, for example, Christ is the ultimate bringer of grace and Satan the ultimate bringer of perdition. Any individual throughout the Bible then who gives him or herself up for the good of others becomes in some sense a channel of grace and a Christ-type. Conversely, any individual who block's God's grace becomes a channel of perdition, a destroyer of whom Christ said "It is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea" (Mark 9:42, KJV). 4 As Landow points out, the Victorian reader took this basic dichotomy and divided it into even more specific standard characters. Readers of the nineteenth century, therefore, could see a variety of types all through scripture:
Thus Samson, who sacrificed his life for God's people, partially anticipated
Christ, who repeats the action, endowing it with deeper, more complete, more
spiritual significance. Similarly, the scapegoat and the animals sacrificed in
the Temple at Jerusalem, both of which [were] stoned for man's sins and Aaron,
God's priests, are types. (Landow 22)
Of course there existed neither then nor now a primer on biblical "types," and the actual terms
"Channels of Grace" and "Channels of Perdition" are set forth here merely to suggest useful terminology to
clarify the discussion. Yet, thanks to the work of Landow and others, the existence of such types in many
variations within the popular, Victorian culture is undeniable. The term for the third type is again chosen
to clarify, yet thanks to one particular allegory, its existence has probably some of the most overt
manifestations of the three.
These biblical characters struggling between the two polarities of grace and perdition can be represented
by the third type labeled here as "the pilgrim." The very nature of a pilgrim as viewed in the nineteenth century was of uncertainty, as in having an element of
wayward-ness. However, on the whole, most believers emphasized successful pilgrims, relegating the narratives of failures to a sub-text in which they
functioned as warnings. Furthermore, in reading of the failure and salvation of Jonah, Samson, David the king,
St. Peter, St. Paul, and even the prodigal son, divine reclamation was again emphasized as a personal issue.
Victorian readers recognized in the narrative of these redeemed failures the pattern of their own story. Every individual is lost, but all can be saved. The prophet Isaiah's use of the plural possessive was taken literally: "All we like sheep have gone astray" (Isa. 53:6 KJV Emphasis Mine).
The term "pilgrim" used here of course has always had a spiritual connotation dating back to those, like
Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, who traveled to religious shrines. However, it would be safe to say that John Bunyan's allegory, Pilgrim's
Progress, because of its widespread appeal, popularized the use of the word
"pilgrim" to describe an individual's state as he or she journeyed through life toward some spiritual goal. Rev.
Haweis, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, declares that "Next to the Bible, the `Pilgrim's
Progress' [sic] is probably the book which has exercised more influence over the Religion of England than any
other" (vii).
Dickens was certainly familiar with Bunyan's work which was included in the series of books he describes
in the autobiographical fragment he gave to Forster as being so important in the development of his imagination. Michael Hollington, in
Dickens and the Grotesque, reminds readers that it is "constructive to remember Dickens' obvious indebtedness to Bunyan. . .with the wider impact of that book in England in the
early 19th century" (92). Both Landow and Walder make note of Dickens' references to Pilgrim Progress in Oliver Twist, subtitled "The Parish Boy's Progress," and
in The Old Curiosity Shop (Landow 106; Walder 87); and Walder writes that by the time
The Old Curiosity Shop was being written "Dickens's knowledge of Bunyan is
already apparent. . .(86). After The Curiosity Shop's publication, Dickens willingly connected Nell's "wild
and grotesque companions" as embodying qualities found in Progress (Ackroyd 322). Finally, in light of the
role "the pilgrim" will play in David Copperfield, it is certainly worth noting that Dickens includes that same series of books (among which was
Pilgrim's Progress) described in his autobiographical fragment as being also
consumed by the young David Copperfield.
At this point it is important to re-emphasize that it is not the intent of this study to suggest that Dickens in David Copperfield was writing a Christian allegory (that approach has actually been explored by Janet Vogel in her Allegory in Dickens). Instead this study merely wishes to re-affirm Dickens' awareness of the popularity of Bunyan's work and the expectations this popularity created in many of his readers. Since his audience was familiar with certain types, Dickens provides characters who seem to loosely fit certain expectations, but he uses them to dramatize the more basic pattern of an individual's experience of loss and reclamation.
Thus, thanks in part to Pilgrim's Progress, there continued an enduring popularity of allegorical
interpretation of the biblical account concerning the workings of grace over perdition to achieve the
reclamation of the lost. The process could be seen as intensely personal and involving three major recognizable character types: the bringers of grace, the
bringers of perdition, and the pilgrims who as they make their way come under the influence of the first two.
Interestingly, many Victorians found these three types not only in scripture and in obvious allegory but also
in the more general fiction they read. This was encouraged because, as both Dennis Walder
and Stanley Friedman have noted, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century there was a great popularity of what
were called "spiritual biographies," which, like Pilgrim's Progress, describes the struggle of the
individual with the help of grace to overcome perdition and move towards salvation (Walder 114; Friedman 141). Friedman reminds his readers that this tradition is
actually the foundation of the nineteenth century novel.
Beginning with a quote by Roy Pascal, Friedman explains `The nineteenth-century novels that delve deep
into childhood, from Dickens and the Brontes onwards, are unimaginable without the great
auto-biographies.' To such links, we may add another line of connection, one moving from Puritan autobiography to the early English
novels of the eighteenth century and then on to Victorian fiction. . .the web is important
in alerting us to the religious element in both Victorian autobiography and fiction
(Friedman 141).
Thus, novels like Jane Eyre and David Copperfield, while admittedly fiction, presented themselves as
auto biographies which encouraged many readers to read them with the same expectations they had of Bunyan's Grace Abounding, which was itself a more "realistic"
presentation of the world view pictured in Pilgrim's
Progress. Readers familiar with the standard spiritual biographies would naturally expect in any individual's
personal narrative examples of the three types dramatizing the struggle between grace and perdition over souls. No one knew this better than Dickens. His
genius was his ability to incorporate and expand upon
these expectations.
VI
Although the anticipation for religious typology was very strong in Dickens' audience, his goal was to
surpass the usual expectations for a simple spiritual development and try to examine the emotional, physical, spiritual and moral development of his character--in
short his novel was an attempt to review the life's
development of an entire human entity. This called for a far more subtle use of narrative voice than say Defoe,
whose Robinson Crusoe also describes an overt example of physical and spiritual loss and reclamation. The
backward eye of David was to encompass a great variety of experiences.
The trouble with this is that as David, the narrator, looks in so many ways the reader is flooded
with stimuli. There is also the problem, as many critics have noted, that David is sometimes incredibly
and perhaps willfully obtuse about the importance of the events he is going through, and finally there is the
fact, as Edgar Johnson notes, that the character David "himself seems to fade out of the picture as his story
moves toward the time of his life when he is supposed to be writing it" (690). All of this combines to tempt
readers to forget that it is David's stage by stage development which is the work's central theme. To off-set this confusion, Dickens includes cues to remind the
reader of the important theme of loss and reclamation. He does this by using overt scriptural echoes which
always relate to the biblical message of reclamation and by working through the pattern on different levels all
through the novel.
The experiences of Little Em'ly is the most obvious example of this pattern. However, many secondary
characters like Martha, Mr. Micawber, Mr. Wickfield, Mrs. Strong, and even Daniel Peggotty and Betsey Trotwood contain elements of the pilgrim in their
narratives. In addition, there are several overt references to pilgrimages and traveling down life's road
within the text that also help to keep the "pilgrim" image before the readers' minds. One of Mr. Spenlow's
sisters notes that "Frances took his road; we took ours" (595). Mr. Micawber speaks of the
"landmarks" which are "on the road to the tomb" (706). The titles of chapters xxxii and xl, "The Beginning of a Long Journey"
and "The Wanderer" respectively, emphasize Daniel Peggotty's role as a pilgrim; and he is, in fact, called
"poor pilgrim" (473) at the end of the chapter "The Beginning of a long Journey." However, the fact that
these references allude in part to a literal journey does not mask the more abstract meaning of the involved characters' emotional and moral changes.
It is also interesting to note that in the chapter "A Greater Loss," just before Em'ly's desertion of her
family and future husband is discovered (causing Daniel to begin the search which will change his own life),
David writes that "I parted from them [Daniel and Ham] at the wicket-gate, where visionary Strap had rested
with Roderick Random's knapsack in the days of yore" (448). Edward Guiliano and Philip Collins in the
Annotated Dickens correctly identify this as referring to Smollett's novel Roderick Random (57). Yet the image of a burdened man beside a wicket gate would also
surely--especially in a chapter which rings with biblical references--raise to many Victorian readers the image of Bunyan's burdened pilgrim standing beside the
wicket gate which marks the beginning of his journey to the Celestial City.
Finally, in the chapter "Absence," David overtly speaks of "my pilgrimage" (814). Again Guiliano and Collins correctly remind the reader of Byron's secular work, Child Harold's Pilgrimage. David's reaction to nature in this chapter adds credence to this reference. However, just before the pilgrimage reference, David also speaks of "carrying my burden with me everywhere" (813), and when it begins to abate he does not give Nature much credit but chooses instead to say "thank Heaven!" (814). Clearly Dickens intends to remind his readers of pilgrims throughout the story.
VII
The main reason that it is relevant and important to use the term "channel" of any sort in
David Copperfield is that throughout the work Dickens' readers are constantly reminded of the importance of the type of influence each character has upon others. Many
characters are noticeable in their desire to influence others for good. Betsey Trotwood tells Mr. Wickfield that her intent for David is "to make the child happy
and useful" (221). David comments on Agnes' "influence for all good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time" (232). Wickfield says of David himself when
as a boy he is about to move into the lawyer's home: "It is wholesome to have you here. Wholesome for me, wholesome for Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of us"
(233). Mrs. Micawber, David notes, "prided herself on taking a clear view of things, and keeping Mr. Micawber
straight by her woman's wisdom, when he might otherwise go a little crooked" (417). Dr. Strong speaks of his
good intentions towards his wife, saying: "I took her to my self when her character was scarcely formed. So far
as it was developed, it had been my happiness to form it" (618). And Daniel Peggotty's ability to direct a
soul for good is mentioned overtly when he deals with the shame-tortured Martha: "His influence upon her was
complete. . .her passionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute" (684).
There are also numerous descriptions of negative influences throughout the novel. David comments that his first school master, Creakle, was "an incapable brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held, than to be Lord High Admiral or Commander-in-Chief--in either of which capacities it is probable that he would have done infinitely less mischief" (90). Miss Dartle in her fury against Em'ly says "I would have her drest in rages, and cast out in the streets to starve. If I had the power to sit in judgment on her, I would see it done. . .If I could hunt her to her grave, I would" (471). Betsey Trotwood tells her husband "You stripped me of the great part of al I ever had. . .you closed my heart against the whole world, years and years" (688). Even David mentions--if lightly--the negative effect he and his wife have on others because of their poor management: "The fact is my dear. . .there is a contagion in us. We infect every one about us" (693). David is even stronger later in this speech when he says "We are positively corrupting people" (694).
Comments about such evil influence upon others occur even in the summary statements on certain pages such as "Uriah Heep's growing influence" (369) or "Uriah poisons Dr. Strong's mind" (615). Finally, one of the most memorable descriptions David, himself, gives of a foul influence in his life, that of his step-father Mr. Murdstone, is made especially touching and tragic because it not only describes the evil of his influence but it also actually emphasizes the lost potential Murdstone had for good:
God help me, I might have been improved for my
whole life, I might have been made another
creature perhaps for life, by a kind word at
that season. A word of encouragements and
explanation of pity for my childish ignorance
. . .might have made me dutiful to him in my
heart henceforth, instead of in my
hypocritical outside, and might have made me
respect instead of hate him. (46-47)
To go on to list every example describing negative or positive influence would be exhausting (and much of this will be covered in depth as the pattern of loss and reclamation in the novel is analyzed). Suffice it to say, that Dickens has placed around every pilgrim in David Copperfield those who like Bunyan's "Worldy-Wiseman" of "Faithful" work to either help or hinder the pilgrim's attainment of his or her goal.
Yet, no character in David Copperfield is limited to only one particular quality. Littimer may be called "Old Guilt" (463), but he is also clearly the real portrait of the condescending waiter many have encountered at certain restaurants. Agnes may be described by David as "Hope embodied" (510), but she is also a frail and frightened women, powerless in herself to stop the progressive control of Heep over her father. Dickens demonstrates his intelligence as an artist by not limiting his most important characters to a single role, and it is on this level that allegorical interpretations falter. While some of the most interesting characters in David Copperfield are so because of their influence upon a pilgrim, they also remain integrated, complex characters in themselves.
VIII
It seems then, when examining David Copperfield, that it should not be assumed that a character who appears to fulfill the expectations of a particular type is to be viewed only as a representative of a single theological/allegorical concept. Dickens should never be so simplified. Daniel Peggotty is a channel of grace at one point and a pilgrim in others, but he is also a representative of a working man's struggle with an injustice inflicted upon him and his family by an aristocrat Steerforth because of his "lower" class.
Nor should Dickens be suspected of writing a religious tract in order to demonstrate the truth of a practical faith. As Walder notes "Dickens was not a religious novelist, nor were any of his novels primarily religious in intention or effect. This is important for it distinguishes his work from a very large number of such novels which appeared during his lifetime" (15). It is only in comparison to many twentieth century novels that Dickens' work seems especially filled with Christian typology. The last thing Dickens wanted to do through his writing was to enlist anyone in a particular faith. Indeed, Dickens "thought this kind of writing a sham" (16). Rather, Dickens' use of loss and reclamation pattern in a Christian context is the utilization of a pattern which evidently he and certainly his readers assumed was part of the real world experience. So, in the end, what is Dickens doing?
Some critics feel that he is allowing David to work through the important questions of life. Stanley Friedman articulates this concept well when he writes: Indeed, the entire narrative [of David Copperfield] can be regarded as an attempt to determine whether effort or providence or chance is the decisive factor in the world, whether suffering can be redeemed, whether belief is divine justice can be reaffirmed. (128)
To do this David does not need to see his world in Christian allegorical terms, but he does need to seek a sense of order. Thus, David seems to be reenacting a pattern over and over again as he replays his life. What arises is an order out of the disorder of his early experience.
To help the reader follow this order, Dickens through David, often gives individuals of influence tell-tale characteristics which allow the reader to quickly determine which group David thinks the character represents. Thus Murdstone, as if his name were not enough, is described as having an "arrogant, devil's humour" (49), and Uriah Heep has a "cadaverous face" (218) a "skeleton's hand" (219) and eyes "like two red suns" (221). In contrast, Agnes Wickfield is associated with "a stained glass window in a church" (223) and when Daniel Peggotty walks out into a snowy night to continue his quest for his lost niece, David comments "Every-thing seemed. . .to be hushed in reverence for him" (589).
However, as will be shown, overt cues are not enough, especially in one of David's greatest
disappointments--Steerforth. In descriptions of this young aristocrat, there are times when David is
completely unaware of the negative influence whose presence he has come under. But the David looking back recalls comments by other, like those of Agnes and Mr.
Mell, which he realizes should have made him aware of Steerforth's true nature. The existence of these
comments reaffirms the pattern David is looking for which he may have feared failed him.
There can be little doubt that in Dickens' day many Victorians looked for confirmation of Christian values,
concepts, and typology in novels. Partly, this was to confirm their own beliefs about the importance of an
individual's struggle through loss and reclamation.
Also during the nineteenth century, thanks to Pilgrim's Progress, spiritual biographies, and the typological way of reading the Bible, the pattern of this struggle was often portrayed as the journey of a pilgrim trying to make his or her own way--choosing between the advice of channels of grace and channels of perdition. Of course, Dickens was clearly aware of and willing to exploit these images and assumptions. How willing remains to be demonstrated in the remaining chapters of this dissertation on David Copperfield.
Thus, in chapter two of this study, the religious pattern of loss and reclamation will be first explained
and then demonstrated as it is played out in the life of Little Em'ly. In chapter three, the actual progression
of the pattern will be analyzed closely--with a break down of the different stages being demonstrated in a
variety of ways by the host of minor characters whose experiences become noticeable as fitting within this
pattern only because of the obvious cycle in Em'ly's life.
Finally the last chapter will examine how an awareness of this pattern reminds the reader that the most important pilgrim in the novel is David Copperfield himself. His pilgrimage on the one hand functions as a narrative of his life, showing a young man working his way toward a productive and wholesome existence: yet on the other hand, the novel's history is also the pilgrimage of the narrator himself. David tries to wrestle meaning out of his early disordered experiences, and there is a possibly that his motivation for doing this is that David is facing the last great crisis of his life which threatens his sense of order--his own approaching death.