Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol:
Famed British author, Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in
Portsmouth, England. He was the second of eight children, living in a poor neighborhood in
London. His parents were John Dickens, a naval clerk, who always lived beyond his means.
Married to his mother Elizabeth Dickens, who aspired to be a teacher and a school director.
Dickens went to William Giles’ school in Chatham, Kent, for approximately one year before his father’s money habits caught up with him.
Dickens’ father was sent to prison for debt in 1824, when Dickens’ was just twelve years old. Following his father’s imprisonment, Dickens’ had to drop out of school to work at a boot-blacking factory along the River of Thames. He earned 6 shillings a week, which is a dollar and forty-four cents in US money. It was the best he could do to help support his family. Pondering the experience of working, Dickens saw it as the moment he said goodbye to his youthful innocence, stating that he wondered “how he could be so easily cast away at such a young age” (Charles Dickens Bio. Bio.com. N.d. 18 Oct. 2013).
Dickens’ felt abandoned and betrayed by the adults who were supposed to take care of him. These sentiments would later become a theme in his writing. Dickens was able to go back to school when his father received an inheritance and paid off his debts. At the time, he went to Wellington House Academy in London for nearly three years. In 1827, Dickens had to drop out of school again when he was just 15 to contribute to his family’s income. Dickens’ got a job as an office boy, which was an early launching point for his writing career. A few years later, in 1833, he began sending sketches to various magazines...
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...kens’ writing career he began a second career by performing public readings of his works to packed houses throughout Britain and America. The most popular of his readings was A Christmas Carol for which he wrote a condensed version that he could read in an hour and a half.
Dickens’ name had become so synonymous with Christmas that on hearing of his death in 1870, a little girl in London asked, “Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father
Christmas die too?” (David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Page. Charles Dickens Page. N.p., n.d.
Web. 24 Oct. 2013). Many people would say Dickens has probably had more influence on the way that we celebrate Christmas today than any single individual in human history...except Santa
Claus.
Works Cited
David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Page. Charles Dickens Page. N.p., n.d.
Web. 24 Oct. 2013
Charles Dickens Bio. Bio.com. N.d. 18 Oct. 2013
Explore how Dickens makes his readers aware of poverty in A Christmas Carol One of the major themes in "A Christmas Carol" was Dickens' observations of the plight of the children of London's poor and the poverty that the poor had to endure. Dickens causes the reader to be aware of poverty by the use and type of language he uses. He uses similes and metaphors to establish clear and vivid images of the characters who are used to portray his message. Dickens describes his characters like caricatures. Dickens exaggerates characters characteristics in order to make his point and provide the reader with a long living memory.
Another chthonic journey that Charles Dickens faced was his working condition and his pay. Dickens worked at a blacking warehouse. The blacking warehouse was in terrible condition. There were rats everywhere, decaying floors and extremely small rooms. From this job he only earned six pints a week, which is very little to live on. With getting so little money he could barely buy the things that were necessary to live on. Once he bought things that he needed he had little to no extra money. He couldn’t buy any fun things to play with or extra food for a bedtime snack, which meant that at times he had have to go without food or other necessary items.
you did not life was very tough. It is not a place where, I feel,
A Christmas Carol like many of Dickens' novels is set mainly in London sometime in the middle of the 19th century. I think this because that’s where Dickens is from and that is where the problems are occurring for example poverty.
He would also always resent the humiliation and pain caused by his father's imprisonment, despising both the folly of his parent and the cruelty of the legal system that punished it so harshly. Thus, Dickens's outlook on life was shaped by an intimate awareness of poverty, filth, social humiliation, legal oppression, adult irresponsibility, and industrial squalor. It was also shaped by a powerful sympathy for the victims of these forces. Following the dire experiences of his childhood, Dickens moved on to more rewarding forms of employment, becoming a clerk in a law office, a newspaper reporter, and a recorder of Parliamentary debates.
He saw the results of poor parenting and he himself had witnessed the wretchedness of poverty. Several of his novels draw on these experiences and they include boys living through vindictive and humiliating experiences. One of these was "Oliver Twist," this was written to express Dickens feelings towards society and how it needed to be changed so that there was no difference between the rich and the poor and that we are all human beings. "Oliver Twist" was published in chapters or episodes for a magazine so the reader will want to read on. Dickens also did reading tours where he read extracts to a audience and because he had written the novel himself he captured the tones and the accents of the characters brilliantly.
the University of Missouri until his father forced him to quit and go to work for his
Charles Dickens is a famous novelist who was born on February 7TH 1812, Portsmouth England. His novel ‘Oliver Twist’ had been serialized and to also show Dickens purposes, which was to show the powerful links between poverty and crime. The novel is based on a young boy called Oliver Twist; the plot is about how the underprivileged misunderstood orphan, Oliver the son of Edwin Leeford and Agnes Fleming, he is generally quiet and shy rather than being aggressive, after his parents past away he is forced to work in a workhouse and then forced to work with criminals. The novel reveals a lot of different aspects of poverty, crime and cruelty which Dickens had experienced himself as a young boy in his disturbing and unsupportive childhood, due to his parents sent to prison so therefore Charles, who was already filled with misery, melancholy and deprivation had started working at the age of twelve at a factory to repay their debt.
Charles Dickens, an English writer and social critic, lived in England from 1812 to 1870 (Cody). Dickens usually critiques topics important to him or those that have affected him throughout his life. He grew up poor and was forced to work at an early age when his father was thrown into debtors prison (Cody). As he became a popular and widely known author he was an outspoken activist for the betterment of poor people’s lives (Davis). He wrote A Tale of Two Cities during the 1850s and published the book in 185...
Charles Dickens, born February 7th, 1812 in Portsmouth, England was one of eight children. He was unfortunately born into a low social class and in the English society that often meant you were the rag dolls for the rest of the country. Although his father didn’t solicit an abundance of money he spent it as if he did. They lived entertaining lives but as a result of their frequent spending they...
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, at Portsea on the Southern coast of England. To John and Elizabeth Dickens, Dickens was the second eldest of eight children. The Dickens family were on fragile financial ground from the very start.
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812. The second of eight children born into an incredibly poor family, Charles led an extremely oppressed childhood. After his father was sent to a debtor’s prison, Charles went to work at the age of twelve to assist his family in paying off their debt. The same
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England. He was the second of eight children, and his father, John drove them into poverty. John was sent to prison for debt in 1824 when Dickens was twelve years of age. Dickens worked in an unsanitary boot-blacking factory to provide money to his family, leaving school entirely. Although he started earning a fair amount of money at his factory job, he strived for educational
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, and died in 1870; Dickens was the most influential and popular English novelist, of the Victorian age. He is even considered the most popular novelist in 21st century. During Dickens lifetime, he became well known internationally for his extraordinary characters, his mastery of prose in telling their lives, and his portrayal of the social classes.
Charles Dickens is well known for his distinctive writing style. Few authors before or since are as adept at bringing a character to life for the reader as he was. His novels are populated with characters who seem real to his readers, perhaps even reminding them of someone they know. What readers may not know, however, is that Dickens often based some of his most famous characters, those both beloved or reviled, on people in his own life. It is possible to see the important people, places, and events of Dickens' life thinly disguised in his fiction. Stylistically, evidence of this can be seen in Great Expectations. For instance, semblances of his mother, father, past loves, and even Dickens himself are visible in the novel. However, Dickens' past influenced not only character and plot devices in Great Expectations, but also the very syntax he used to create his fiction. Parallels can be seen between his musings on his personal life and his portrayal of people and places in Great Expectations.