: Re: Writing a character who is going through a civilizing process without overdoing it? In my planned novel the main character is essentially from a less technologically advanced society and is learning

@Sent2472441

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There is a surviving account of the first meeting between Portuguese sailors and Japanese locals. What's interesting about it is that accounts of the meeting survived from both sides. The accounts go something like this:

Japanese account: Those barbarians! They eat with their hands!
Portuguese account: Those barbarians! They don't have chairs!

You are looking down at your character. You are implying that he is a blank slate, and has to learn everything. Consider instead what his culture is. How do his values conflict with his new society's? What looks like barbarism to him? What does he have that they don't?
A very fine example of this is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. There, John, "the Savage", who has been raised on values imparted by Shalespeare's works, is confronted with a technologically advanced utopia, where the only value is consumerism.

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