On Finding Silver Lining: Reading Dickens
The cold whispered through the walls, and the wind danced with the smoke of the burning candles, making the cold walls show the offbeat of shadows. The Hungerford Stairs were not the scene Charles Dickens (12) had envisioned. He saw the water of the Thames River, wooden boats rowed by canoes, and factory smoke fooling those who saw it from a distance into thinking it was the smoke of a fire, but rest assured, Charles Dickens entered the smoky building semi-consciously. He was not ill. Charles Dickens was forced to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory.
Into the School Biz
On a warm morning, I closed my eyes to meet the zilch of satisfaction. The sun bestowed its rays upon the thick book I was supposed to read. The teacher was writing on the whiteboard, and her back was facing me. I was entirely nonchalant about what was on the whiteboard, as it was the same as what was written in the thick book I was reading.
It was sorrowful when I thought back to my never-ending elementary school days. I spaced out most of the time. I was a straight-A student, amiable, competitive, and more mature than kids my age. I read books all the time: novels, novellas, and newspapers! The first thing that comes to my mind when I talk about newspapers is that they were supposed to be the first thing that made me love reading.
Peer-Kecil was the name. One of the rubrics in the Pikiran Rakyat newspaper was issued every Sunday. I couldn’t forget the whimsical comics “Tak dan Dut” and “Peri dan Acil” or the reading experience about the coolest kid in town who won a competition. I thought I had a great time reading those on a Sunday morning until it got bad when those fiction stories got into your brain, chewing you inside and out until tomorrow came, and you can’t use your brain unless those things that you ate yesterday got swallowed nicely. This experience would never leave you alone; you needed to jot it down, but you know you’re not supposed to do it in your thick book back then, in your class.
My mind has continually deteriorated, aged at least thirteen years old. This cherry openness became a pastime I shared with others. I would say “this robot-like routine” had become an inherent situation that must be questioned. Yes, I thought about escaping. I thought about having a dream, and I thought about just reading now and then.
Do I need to Leave, Dad?
Inside the factory was black and dumped, and it was slating Young Dickens like a madman. Amidst the sounds of the rats coming back and forth, his scattered head was full of dismal thoughts. His father’s lament dragged him off before. In 1824, John Dickens became indebted and imprisoned in the Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison. Charles Dickens abandoned his education and worked ten hours daily for barely enough shillings for his family’s food to survive.
His hands were tranced around the sticking labels that he needed to stick onto the bottles of liquid shoe polish. The poor boy was missing the joy of reading novels without living in the real dystopia he would encounter in some of the books he devoured. Unbeknownst to the other kids, Dickens built up rage at the injustices of the world he was living in.
It was The Victorian Era of Abandoned Child Labor, the rage towards financial and social injustice, and the desire to be emotionally secure with his father. Yet, The Father and The Son never came to the same place and connection; they fell apart. The Kin were destroyed.
‘My Father and Mother had been stricken dumb upon it.’
That’s what Old Dickens later wrote to his wife. Unsurprisingly, Charles Dickens would keep everything around him on his sleeve; he would just write it down until someone found his notes. Dickens would contemplate while walking in the streets of London. He wants to get to know this massive city. He wants to get to know anybody in it.
The lingering memories I could think about were getting nearer to the point where I almost refused to let myself get close to other people. I was too embarrassed to tell them I did not like school, the place, or the institutional system that convulsed me. In a family where education is one of the crucial things, it feels like a persona non grata when I say that.
Rather than asking me to drop my demeanor, my father was my chaperone for God knows how long. He took me to see a place on Sukarajin Street. It was a homeschool, where everything started again — a home of anything you wanted it to be.
It took me only a little time to grasp education’s true significance. Indeed, I was frantic and yet too weary of the same routine. The search for my fine line was so overwhelming that it would engulf me. I had the poignancy of sorrow that came earlier than almost any of my peers. Nothing to worry about, and I’m glad my father said that.
Ganzheit
These significant changes in Dickens’s life affected his vision of life, society, and how he wrote. Thus, the theoretical method of Ganzheit is keen to think about at this time. Ganzheit Method is a literary work that is a unity, not separable, and a totality that is not the sum of its constituent elements. We see the work as a whole, not separate it aspect by aspect.
In his most reputable works, “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Oliver Twist,” we can see how much Dickens conveys his emotions. Through the plots, he reflected on the life he had since he was a kid, the poverty of people at that time, the abuse of children to work all day with minimum wages, and the class distinction and crime that started during The Industrial Revolution would never leave his soul. Still, most of the critical side of him is the optimism that he never went out of his dream.
“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out…” (Dickens, 469)
Dickens believes all the struggles endured by the people will lead to redemption and the gradual erasure of societal wrongs. We see the optimism, the hope for a brighter future, and the quest for redemption and freedom.
Blessing in Disguises
From these various backgrounds, there lies a blessing in disguises; Dickens might have had extensive eyes to catch little things surrounding him, but he would not have met his future characters in his works if he hadn’t experienced those awful things that happened during his youth.
What’s more, I would not write this essay if I was not brave enough to say goodbye to the school where I wasn’t comfortable. It has always been a blessing in disguise. Indeed, it is hard to choose how to live a life that changes 180 degrees in a second. We needed the time to reflect. We needed friends to make it through. We use books to escape. We write to make the new world that we always want to build.
I have my father to revive it.
Charles Dickens had his works to revive himself.
The Kin is being rebuilt.
It’s time for Recalled to Life.
Written for Final Exam of Literary Criticism
