Ragged Dick is a good example of a Bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel that focuses on a protagonist's development during childhood and adolescence. As a Bildungsroman, the novel follows Dick as he transforms himself from a homeless boot-black to a "respectable" young man with a bright future in business. In Alger's view, coming of age is a straightforward matter of self-improvement: Dick consciously develops himself by learning to exercise thrift and economy, gaining an education, and learning the manners of the moneyed upper class. In many classic Bildungsromans, such as Jane Eyre or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the process of becoming an adult involves a loss of innocence or a period of emotional turmoil. By contrast, Alger's narrative is unequivocally positive; in Ragged Dick, there are no emotional costs to growing up.
Ragged Dick bears some similarities to books in the Naturalist literary movement, which began around 1865 and used realism to illuminate poor social conditions in the United States. Like Naturalist writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Alger focuses on the lives of the urban poor. However, Ragged Dick is less a work of realism than a moral parable about individual development. And while many Naturalist books depict characters whose fates are decided by their social environment, Alger uses Ragged Dick to argue that individuals can radically transform their circumstances through hard work and good choices.
It's important to note that Ragged Dick was originally a serial novel, published in sections in The Student and the Schoolmate, a monthly magazine for children. This is one reason why Alger's chapters often end with cliffhangers—the suspenseful structure is designed to pique the reader's interest and compel them to buy the next issue of the magazine. Some chapters begin with a reference to the previous chapter that may feel redundant when reading the novel in book form; but those seemingly obvious references would have helped the novel's original readers reacquaint themselves with Dick's story after a long break.
