Fred Kaplans View on Dickens Free Essay Example, 3000 words

This period in Dickens life was characterized by deep loneliness, significant loss of self-esteem and the oppression of dreams, hopes, and ideals. Although he gained a great deal of information regarding the lower classes and their way of life and survival, including those within Marshalsea that he would use to great effect in his later works, his family s treatment of him at this time finally cemented his understanding of himself as somehow less valuable to them than the other members of the group, particular upon his father s release from prison. Whereas everyone else had been liberated, he was still imprisoned and Charles release from the blacking factory prison was not occasioned by any concern for his welfare, but was instead occasioned by an external antagonism between his father and the factory owner. Finally, his mother insisted that Charles return to work at the blacking factory while his father insisted that he go back to school, thus making it certain that Charles was both only a pawn and at the same time the cause of such a bitter quarrel. These early experiences informed and shaped the author Dickens, instilling in him a deep-seated interest and fascination with the social circumstances that constrained lives regardless of hopes or promises in youth and would affect his activities throughout the remainder of his life. We will write a custom essay sample on Fred Kaplans View on Dickens or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page For example, in Pickwick Papers (1836), he avoids much discussion into issues of poverty, class identification and industrialization that he addresses in future novels and instead creates a series that at its core is a definition of human nature as essentially benevolent, as desirably Pickwickian.