Today is Charles Dickens’ birthday,
were he alive, so I thought I’d do a little blog. Well, truthfully it was
brought to my attention by a friend and I thought she had a very good point!
Charles Dickens was a staple in educational literature. I don’t mean to say I
found his works particularly educational, but the people who pick what books
kids should read in school sure thought so.
I was trying to remember
all of the titles of Dickens I’d read and even remember which books he wrote. I
felt more than a little silly after I looked him up and found that he had
penned more than a few of my favorites! Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A
Christmas Carol… I loved these books. Now, I remember the movie versions more
than the actual written ones: which is a sad truth about growing up as well as
a statement about what I do with a lot of my free time.
Great Expectations is by
far my favorite of these stories. It’s a story about regret, unrequited love,
and debt. The debt is very interesting; it’s both financial as well as owing
the people who do you favors, even if you didn’t really want to do the favors
in the first place. Pip has a lot of
debt. He owes everyone in his life something, but I feel sorry for him because
a lot of the time he didn’t even know who he owed until the debt was being
called in. Of course there was all of his other debt which he did know about,
it’s the kind of debt that a poor kid who acquires a lot of money tends to
have.
Dickens wrote a lot
about debt, now that I think about it. Isn’t that sort of what A Christmas
Carol was about? The debts of men’s souls and the weight they carry. Luckily
for Scrooge Dickens believed in second chances.
I remember very little
about Oliver Twist, unless you count it’s spin off Oliver and Company or the
Wishbone version, but I remember having to read it in school and not
understanding why Oliver couldn’t ever catch a break. I think it’s an important
story for kids to read but it’s taught to such a young age that I don’t think
the kids really get it, at least not the type of neighborhood where I grew up.
Oliver Twist is a story about what it really means to be down and out, and
since he’s a kid a lot of it is out of his control. It’s a lesson I think kids
need to learn, that it could always be worse. I’m just not sure the message
really reaches kids in the early years of middle school.
So, have I enjoyed the
Dickens I’ve read? Absolutely. Would I go out of my way to keep reading him?
Probably not. There’s so many things going on in this world right now I like to
keep my reading a little more upbeat and off the beaten track. I’m certainly
glad that I’ve read him though.
1 comments:
I forgot he wrote A Christmas Carol..lol so I've read two of his books and seen three of the movies (Great Expectations). I think I have G.E. on my phone in the e-reader. Guess I should go ahead and read it in honor of his bi-centenial.
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