A Stone for Danny Fisher is a Bildungsroman (or novel of growing up) in the picaresque tradition that goes back at least to Don Quixote (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes. More immediate ancestors include the nineteenth-century moral tales of Horatio Alger, turn-ofthe-century muckraking novels of low life like The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair, and proletarian novels of the 1930s like Studs Lonigan (1932-1935) by James T. Farrell. James Lane has also suggested a specific relationship between A Stone for Danny Fisher and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) by Betty Smith and Knock on Any Door (1947) by Willard Motley. In particular, Smith's Francie Nolan symbolizes the aspirations of those determined to overcome the dehumanizing effects of the modern urban experience through hard work. Danny Fisher illustrates how easy it is to be destroyed by this world.