/lit/ - Literature

Is there a book that spends a large part of its time showing the redemption of a character: for example, a young man who had a brutal upbringing and who begins the book as a violent, dangerous person, full of hatred and cruelty, but who, little by little, and through good influences, slowly becomes kinder, more humane, wiser, softer, until he reaches a point that, from the joys of a new life of love and wisdom, a traumatic event of such great proportions occurs that all that long work of redemption ends up undone, and someone who had fought so much to become a good person ends up returning to your state of hatred and bestiality?