¶ … Home Exam When a critic speaks of the infusion of the didactic spirit into the novel, he or she means the 'teaching spirit' of the novel in either its plot structure, character development, or the way the author philosophically uses the novel to teach the reader, by reflecting upon the good or bad fates of the novel's protagonists. The eminent critic who referred to the didactic spirit of the novel thus meant that it is not surprising, given the teaching or instructive spirit of novels that novelists show readers how they ought to behave or how life ought to be using the examples of fictional characters. Novelists thus could be...

His characters are like fables, where the bad are punished and the good are, after many trials, rewarded at the novel's end. In David Copperfield, the good and hard working David and Agnes are rewarded at the end of the tale, while the less-than exemplary characters are rewarded with ill fates, such as the silly Dora and…