LYRICFLUENT
LYRICFLUENTWhy Should You Read Charles Dickens? Lyrics by Addison Anderson Addison Anderson
Below, you will find the lyrics for Why Should You Read Charles Dickens? by Addison Anderson.
The starving orphan seeking a second helping of gruel
The spinster wasting away in her tattered wedding dress
The stone-hearted miser plagued by the ghost of Christmas past
More than a century after his death
These remain recognizable figures from the work
Of Charles Dickens
So striking is his body of work that it gave rise
To its own adjective
But what are the features of Dickens's writing
That make it so special?
Dickens's fiction brims with anticipation
Through brooding settings, plot twists, and mysteries
These features of his work kept his audience wanting more
When first published, his stories were serialized
Meaning they were released a few chapters
At a time in affordable literary journals
And only later reprinted as books
This prompted fevered speculation over the cliffhangers
And revelations he devised
Serialization not only made fiction available to a wider audience
And kept them reading
But increased the hype around the author himself
Dickens became particularly popular for his wit
Which he poured into quirky characters and satiric scenarios
His characters exhibit the sheer absurdity of human behavior
And their names often personify traits or social positions
Like the downtrodden Bob Cratchit
The groveling Uriah Heep
And the cheery Septimus Crisparkle
Dickens set these colorful characters
Against intricate social backdrops
Which mimic the society he lived in
For instance, he often considered
The changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution
During this period
The lower classes experienced sordid working
And living conditions
Dickens himself experienced this hardship as a child
When he was forced to work in a boot blacking factory
After his father was sent to debtors' prison
This influenced his depiction of the Marshalsea prison
In Little Dorrit
Where the titular character cares for her convict father
Prisons, orphanages, or slums may seem grim settings for a story
But they allowed Dickens to shed light
On how his society's most invisible people lived
In Nicholas Nickleby
Nicholas takes a job with the schoolmaster Wackford Squeers
He soon realizes that Squeers is running a scam
Where he takes unwanted children from their parents for a fee
And subjects them to violence and deprivation
Oliver Twist also deals with the plight
Of children in the care of the state
Illustrating the brutal conditions of the workhouse
In which Oliver pleads with Mr. Bumble for food
When he flees to London, he becomes ensnared
In a criminal underworld
These stories frequently portray Victorian life
As grimy, corrupt, and cruel
But Dickens also saw his time as one in which old traditions
Were fading away
London was becoming the incubator of the modern world
Through new patterns in industry, trade, and social mobility
Dickens's London is therefore a dualistic space
A harsh world that is simultaneously filled
With wonder and possibility
For instance, the enigma of Great Expectations
Centers around the potential of Pip
An orphan plucked from obscurity by an anonymous benefactor
And propelled into high society
In his search for purpose
Pip becomes the victim of other people's ambitions for him
And must negotiate with a shadowy cast of characters
Like many of Dickens's protagonists
Poor Pip's position is constantly destabilized
Just one of the reasons why reading Dickens
Is the best of times for the reader
While being the worst of times for his characters
Dickens typically offered clear resolution
By the end of his novels
With the exception of The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The novel details the disappearance of the orphan
Edwin under puzzling circumstances
However, Dickens died before the novel was finished
And left no notes resolving the mystery
Readers continue to passionately debate over
Who Dickens intended as the murderer
And whether Edwin Drood was even murdered in the first place
Throughout many adaptations
Literary homages
And the pages of his novels
Dickens's sparkling language and panoramic worldview
Continue to resonate
Today, the adjective Dickensian
Often implies squalid working or living conditions
But to describe a novel as Dickensian is typically high praise
As it suggests a story in which true adventure and discovery
Occur in the most unexpected places
Although he often explored bleak material
Dickens's piercing wit never failed
To find light in the darkest corners
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