67
very poor and he saw with his own eyes all the horrors and cruelty in a large capitalist city. He
later described this period of his childhood.
When his father’s affairs took a turn for the better, Dickens was sent to school where “the boys
trained white mice much better than the master trained the boys”.
In fact, his education consisted in extensive reading of miscellaneous books. After his
schooldays, he entered the employment of an attorney and in his spare
time studied shorthand
writing.
At the end of 19, Dickens became a parliamentary reporter. This work led naturally to journalism
and journalism to novel-writing. (At the beginning of the forties Dickens made a journey to the
USA after which his faith in the ideas of bourgeois democracy was considerably shaken. The
result of the journey came in two works - “American Notes” and the novel “Martin
Chuzzlewit”).
His first novel “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” appeared in 1836. This work at
once lifted Dickens into the foremost rank as a popular writer of fiction. He followed up this
triumph with a quick succession of outstanding novels in which he masterly depicted the life of
contemporary society.
“The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” recounted the droll adventures of the four
intimate friends, the representatives of the middle class. Dickens stressed the comedy side of life,
people were convulsed with laughter
at the droll characters, the comical dialogues and the
ludicrous incidents.
Besides its humor the novel was a success as it depicted everyday life and everyday people. On
the whole the novel is a humorous and optimistic epopee of the contemporary life though the
author touched some social problems:
English court and justice, the episode of election and
others.
Charles Dickens is famous as one of the world’s best humorists, but among his humorous books
there is only one that can be called essentially humorous, and that is his earliest novel “The
Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”. Dickens proceeded through novel after novel to
create over a thousand characters, no two of whom are alike, all interesting and individual, even
if often exaggerated and caricatured.
Dickens’
characters - humorous, comic or brutal live in the memory as living types.
As elsewhere the Pickwickians are shown in the novel as men who are utterly unpractical and
unable to perform the simplest things, without being assisted or guided. To
render the description
more humorous Dickens makes his characters behave in the most serious and even solemn
manner. This contradicting manner of presentation is one of the most characteristic features of
Dickens’ style in “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: