Throughout Bakhtin’s essay, we see him distinguish the novel from the literature of its past. One of his main suggestions for the novel is that we cannot see it as a fully formed genre, given the fact that it has not died off. Since the novel is still a literary form that we still frequent, Bakhtin claims we cannot fully identify all of its features, as it is still evolving and experimenting and molding itself in different and varied ways. Bakhtin states, “The generic skeleton of the novel is still far from having hardened, and we cannot foresee all its plastic possibilities,” (Bakhtin 1). However, Bakhtin suggests that the epic is the inverse of this, as he states, “ We encounter the epic as a genre that has not only long since completed its development, but one that is already antiquated. With certain reservations we can say the same for the other major genres, even for tragedy,” (Bakhtin 1). Bakhtin suggests that the epic is one genre that has lived its entire lifespan and now can be analyzed for all its attributes. He suggests that the epic is focused on the past, and centers itself around the ideas of tradition. These diametrically opposed genres, while both very different, also provide a connection between the way that literature has evolved, and show us how the novel differs from its formal predecessors in genre.