The apprenticeship of duddy kr
The apprenticeship of duddy krTHE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler is a novel
about the life of a young man named Duddy Kravitz growing up on
Montreal's St. Urbain street. The novel chronicles his life from when he was
a troublesome school boy up until he was a young man of nineteen
desperately trying to make something of himself and own his very own piece
of land. Along the way to becoming a success Duddy has to stomp on a few
toes, and screw over some good friends, and in the end he is left with all the
land and money that he ever wanted, but no friends at all. In short Duddy
Kravitz is the typical jackass. In his novel Richler describes various
instances when Duddy is not loyal or nice to his close friends and is only
interested in making money. In short Richler makes the point that in order to
be successful you cannot play by the rules. You have to stomp on a few toes
and you may lose a few friends along the way.
Firstly Richler shows us in his novel how Duddy's character developed
from a young age. The book starts out with Duddy as a fifteen year old
attending high school. At the beginning of the book we find Duddy in a
bitter conflict with a teacher at the school, Mr. MacPherson. As is seen in
this dialogue: -"I know you're responsible for the drawing on the board and I
think it cowardly of you not to have taken complete responsibility." said the
teacher. -"I'm a coward. Who's afraid to strap who around here?" responded
Duddy. We find that the young Duddy is a bit of a trouble maker, and we
also see a very distinguishing trait that will carry out throughout the book, his
stubbornness. Duddy absolutely refuses to let the teacher win any argument,
and he will not stop until he is proven right. This trait when combined with a
hard nosed attitude would result in Duddy becoming very successful in
business, but not so successful in his social life.
Secondly we can point out numerous incidents within the book when
Duddy screws over a friend in order to further his financial success, and an
extremely poignant one is when he uses an innocent epileptic named Virgil in
order to purchase a truck and further his business. What happens is that
Duddy meets Virgil and finds out that he has one thousand dollars in his
pocket. He persuades Virgil to cough up the one thousand dollars to buy a
truck, and then Duddy would...
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