Criminal Activity and Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, like the majority of Charles Dickens' fiction, contains several autobiographical connotations that demonstrate the author's keen observational talents. Pip, the novel's protagonist, reflects Dickens' painful childhood memories of poverty and an imprisoned father. According to Robert Coles, "there was in this greatest of storytellers an unyielding attachment of sorts to his early social and moral experiences" (566). Complementing Dickens' childhood memories of crime and poverty was his legal training, reflected in the characterizations of lawyers and the abundance of criminal activity that hovers around the world of Great Expectations.
Charles Dickens' father, John, made little money working as a clerk in England's Navy Pay Office (Coles 564). John's low salary, combined with a severe spending problem, would eventually land him in debt. As a consequence, John was placed into debtors' prison. As was the custom of the time, John was forced to bring his family along with him (Coles 564). It was 1824 and young Dickens was only 12 years old (Coles 564). To help his father out of debt, Charles worked under the horrible conditions of a blacking factory (Collins 15). According to Edmund Spenser, quoted in Phillip Collins' Dickens and Crime, these events "lie behind the loneliness, disgrace, and outlawry which pervade all his novels" (15). Collins concurs:
It is a commonplace that his sympathy for suffering and neglected children, which lies at the root of his educational concern, drew much of its strength from the traumatic experience of his own childhood--the period, about his 12th year when the family was in financial straits, ...
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...lodge where some fetter were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time, jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent all public wrong-doing . . . was still far off . . . and a frouzy, ugly, disorderly depressing scene it was. (246; ch. 32)
In addition to once again demonstrating Dickens's observational talent, this passage illustrates how the author's early memories of prison-life combines with his later knowledge of the Victorian legal and prison system to recreate a vivid and realistic view of Victorian life.
Works Cited
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. New York: Harper, 1990.
Coles, Robert. "Charles Dickens and the Law." Virginia Quarterly Review 59 (1983): 564-586.
Collins, Phillip. Dickens and Crime. New York: St. Martin's, 1962.
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That phrase was used repeatedly through each line after the narrator describes his horror from the Dominican army to symbolize the gift and the curse of the war.
It can be seen through Dickens’s highly successful novel Great Expectations, that his early life events are reflected into the novel. Firstly the reader can relate to Dickens’s early experiences, as the novel’s protagonist Pip, lives in the marsh country, and hates his job. Pip also considers himself, to be too good for his ...
The crime rate in the world has increased exponentially over the years. As people know the victims are always sympathized, but it is truly the criminals who get the short end of the stick. In the novel, Great Expectations has many criminals. The criminals in the novel are very similar to the criminals in our everyday lives. Criminality can destroy our lives which are shown by Magwitch, Orlick, and Compeyson.
The Scarlet Letter is a fictional novel that begins with an introductory passage titled ‘The Custom-House’. This passage gives a historical background of the novel and conveys the narrator’s purpose for writing about the legend of Hester Prynne even though the narrator envisions his ancestors criticizing him and calling him a “degenerate” because his career was not “glorifying God”, which is very typical of the strict, moralistic Puritans. Also, although Hawthorne is a Romantic writer, he incorporates properties of Realism into his novel by not idealizing the characters and by representing them in a more authentic manner. He does this by using very formal dialogue common to the harsh Puritan society of the seventeenth century and reflecting their ideals through this dialogue. The Puritans held somewhat similar views as the Transcendentalists in that they believed in the unity of God and the world and saw signs and symbols in human events, such as when the citizens related the meteo...
how it was but rather how it should be. Ibsen has set up an environment where women cannot decide on their own, but presents two female characters in the bok that go beyond this thinking
At the end, the fact that a middle-class family is portrayed makes the entire series of events relatable to a modern audience and is effective in evoking a reaction and truly portrays the genre. The symbolism used shows the fatal flaw of the tragic heroine, the issues in society Ibsen wanted to be tackled and the death of an individual as well as the death of a family, therefore, conveying the key components of a modern domestic tragedy.
Punishment has been in existence since the early colonial period and has continued throughout history as a method used to deter criminals from committing criminal acts. Philosophers believe that punishment is a necessity in today’s modern society as it is a worldwide response to crime and violence. Friedrich Nietzche’s book “Punishment and Rehabilitation” reiterates that “punishment makes us into who we are; it creates in us a sense of responsibility and the ability to take and release our social obligations” (Blue, Naden, 2001). Immanuel Kant believes that if an individual commits a crime then punishment should be inflicted upon that individual for the crime committed. Cesare Beccaria, also believes that if there is a breach of the law by individuals then that individual should be punished accordingly.