CHARLES DICKENS (ing)- life, literature, hard times, coketown, oliver twist, Temi di Inglese

Scarica CHARLES DICKENS (ing)- life, literature, hard times, coketown, oliver twist e più Temi in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! CHARLES DICKENS LIFE: Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Portsmouth. When he was nine years old he was sent to school for a short time but some years later he was forced to work in a factory. He began his writing career as a journalist. He published a series of sketches using the pseudonym 'Boz and in 1836 married Catherine Hogarth. They were followed by an immense number of novels (Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Dombey and Son, Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations) published initially as instalments in magazines and then as complete books, an autobiography (David Copperfield) and contributions to periodicals. He also performed in front of Queen Victoria. He died on 9 June 1870 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His sympathy with the oppressed, his indignation against social injustice, made him one of the most significant voices in the Victorian Age. HIS LITERATURE: Starting with Oliver Twist, Dickens' novels focused on social criticism. The writer faced issues like the consequences of the Industrial Revolution on the lives of the poor, the living and working conditions of the working classes, the cruelty of the workhouses, education, child labour, the inneficiency of the governement's burocracy, crime, pollution, monotony. Dickens knew about the bad living conditions of poors because when he was a child he himself worked in a factory. Dickens' first aim was to denounce the social evils, make his readers aware of them and care for these issues. So he tried to get their full attention by the use of an ironic and simple language with which he presents the Victorian system in a funny way. His second aim was to leave a message to make his readers reflect. He was battling against the materialism and narrow mindness of utilitarism of the victorian economy. Dickens put this as his purpose because he believed that literature had a big role in fixing society. Writing rapidly as his work appeared in monthly instalments, the author maintained interest from one episode to another by ending each episode with a dramatic turn of events that provoked suspense in the reader, who would naturally buy the next issue to learn how the story continued. This accounts for the abundance of characters, narrative details, of climaxes and of improbable coincidences. Dickens answered his readers' tastes by turning to sentimentality and melodrama in many of his works. Dickens was fascinated by urban life and many of his novels were set in London, but there were exceptions. Hard Times was set in Coketown. These industrialised towns were inhabitated by people from all walks of life, often portrayed as caricatures of particular Victorian vices or virtues rather than as real-life people with psychological depth. HARD TIMES THE PLOT: The novel is set in a fictional town called 'Coketown', based on Preston in the north of England, where Thomas Gradgrind, a supporter of Utilitarianism, brings up his children, Louisa and Tom, to believe in 'hard facts' and to reject any form of imagination and enjoyment. His daughter marries Bounderby, a factory owner. This marriage proves to be an extremely unhappy one, and she runs back to her family. Meanwhile Tom steals Bounderby's bank but his father and sister succeed in getting him away from justice. At the end: Gradgrind has given up his philosophy of facts and devotes himself to helping the poor; Tom repents his actions; Bounderby dies; Louisa finds happiness in the love of her friends and family. THEMES: The two main themes of the novel are the condtions of young characters growing up in a hostile adult world, the hardships of the working class and the contrasts between the conditions of life of rich and poor. Dickens attacked Utilitarianism, a materialistic philosophy that excluded aspects of education, such as imagination and the development of personality. In the new schools pupils were forced into conformity through harsh discipline in accord with the need to supply skilled workers to the new factory system. Dickens attacks this uniformity, both in education and in the architecture of the industrial towns. COKETOWN 1854: Coketown was an ugly industrial town. All the buildings where made with red bricks, but this color was covered by smoke and ashes. So they turned black like the painted face of a savage. From the tall chimneys the smoke came out continuously. There was a black canal and his polluted river, a perpetual noise and trembling coming from the buildings. Inside, the pistons of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy sadness. Everything looked the same: the streets, the people and their job. Every day was the same of yesterday or tomorrow. Everything in Coketown had to sole aim to work properly and to produce something that could be sold. The only bulding different from the other was a Church. All the public inscription were painted alike in black and white. Fact,fact,fact in both the material and immaterial aspect of the town (schools, relationship, cemetery). THEMES: In this chapter he focuses on different social problems: explotation, pollution, working condition, monotony. People never have fun, they all do the same job for long hours but for a low weidge. They are presented as machines since they had no personality, and as they lacked education they had few options for emproving their terrible living and working conditions. They were a part of the Victorian organization that had the sole aim to produce something workful. Dickens uses a ripetitive language - same, one another, fact, every, like - to point out what he observes: monotony and depression. With the repetition of words and the use of an ironic language he's able to get the readers interest. Only by doing these he could teach his readers of what was going on and, then, get the government to change things. OLIVER TWIST 1837/1839 Oliver Twist is his most famous novel and it marks the beginning of social criticism. PLOT: Oliver Twist is an orphan that works in an workhouse, where hunger was one of the problems. When he asks for more food officials send him away to work for an undertaker. Oliver runs away to London, where he becomes involved with a gang of thieves, led by Fagin. On his first mission as a pickpocket, Oliver is arrested but then rescued and looked after by Mr Brownlow, the victim of the theft. Fagin's gang of criminals capture Oliver and return him to Fagin. Oliver takes part in a burglary with Sikes but he's shot. Mrs Maylie, the victim of the theft, nurses him back to health and he spends an idyllic summer with her adopted niece Rose. Nancy, who is part of Fagin's gang, discovers why they are so obssesed with Oliver: Monks, one of the accomplices, is in reality Oliver's half-brother and they are sons of a wealthy father, who left most of his fortune to Oliver's mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks plotted to kill Oliver to get the entire inheritance. It also emerges that Rose is Oliver's aunt. Nancy is brutally murdered by Sikes for revealing this information to Rose and Mr Brownlow. The other characters die violently through civil justice. Oliver,