Kazantzakis often creates characters for a didactic purpose, and often his insistence on having his men and women serve as illustrations for philosophical principles causes them to appear ill-developed as people. Several of the minor characters in Zorba the Greek fail to stand out as individuals.
Nevertheless, the main figures are remarkably well drawn, especially the two whose stories are at the center of the novel: Zorba and the narrator. Even in moments when their conversations are most philosophical, Kazantzakis is able to maintain a surprising degree of verisimilitude with his two main characters.
One may easily read this novel as a bildungsroman, the education of a sensitive young man into the harsh world of the twentieth century. The narrator's encounter with Zorba, his comradeship with him as they engage in a series of.....
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