Innocents and Coming-of-Age Protagonists

Protagonists defined by inexperience, moral clarity or a formative passage from childhood or naivety toward adult understanding, the bildungsroman's own central figure and its close relatives in the social-realist novel. Belongs here: a protagonist whose arc is substantially a coming-of-age or a trial of innocence against a corrupting or unjust world. Does not belong here: a protagonist whose defining trait is romantic longing rather than growth or innocence, tracked under Romantic and Star-Crossed Figures below.