Roderick Random
Disinherited by a grandfather who will not acknowledge his father's marriage, a Scottish boy walks to London, is press-ganged aboard a man-of-war and survives the assault on Cartagena with the sick chained below decks in their own filth. Smollett had served as a surgeon's mate on that expedition, and turns the picaresque road into an indictment of the Navy, the law courts and the London that milks provincial hopefuls. Dickens read it as a child and put it among the books that keep David Copperfield alive.
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Lineage
- influenced by ↑ Don Quixote
- influenced by ↑ Gil Blas
- ↓ David Copperfield
- ↓ The Pickwick Papers
- ↓ Nicholas Nickleby
Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 54% · 16 shared
- 54% · 14 shared
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- 48% · 13 shared