Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby is the story of the title character. This is a novel that in some ways is very much typical of Dickens but varies in other ways from many of his other works.  I found it to be a funny, entertaining and brilliant novel.

Nicholas is a young man of about twenty-one years old.  Early on, when his father dies, Nicholas, his sister Kate, and his mother are torn from their middle-class lifestyle and thrown to the mercies of Nicholas’s uncle, Ralph. This uncle is miserly, cold and vindictive. Disliking Nicholas, he sends him away from London to work as a teacher. Though Ralph finds nearby employment for Kate, he tries to set her up for romantic entanglements with his lecherous and immoral business associates. 

Throughout the book, Nicholas alternates his time between various employments that he finds both inside and outside of London.  Along the way, he works at a boarding school for boys that is horribly abusive and neglectful of its charges. There, he befriends Smike, a mentally handicapped and horribly abused boy who becomes Nicholas’s loyal ally throughout the story. Unfortunately, the pair are also pursued by the evil and cruel headmaster, Wackford Squeers, who is trying to regain custody of Smike.  Later, Nicholas and Smike join a company of stage performers and meet all sorts of colorful and amusing characters.  Later still, Nicholas settles in working for the kindly Cheeryble brothers. Throughout the narrative arc, Nicholas’s fortunes gradually rise. The protagonist eventually falls in love with a young woman named Madeline Bray. Madeline is ensnared in a moneymaking plot involving Ralph and the girl’s father, aimed at marrying her to the wretched and immoral Arthur Gride. Of course, Nicholas devotes his efforts to derail the scheme. Newman Noggs, a former gentleman with odd habits, who is now impoverished, attempts to aid Nicholas and his family throughout the book. 

I have read a lot of Dickens over the years. This book was the most Dickensian of them all. What I mean by that is that this novel had the common features that characterize the author’s work in the greatest abundance. The malicious characters were the most over the top. They represent high levels of both villainy and hilarity.  The good characters were almost ridiculously virtuous. The oversentimentality flowed in torrents. The implausible coincidences seemed more abundant than usual, even for Dickens. I do not consider these attributes to be flaws. Reading Dickens over the years, I have come to appreciate these apparent excesses as elements of a surrealistic and brilliant universe that Dickens paints in his novels. The author builds these strange worlds like no other writer has ever done. The book is also filled with Dickens’s marvelous, at times surrealistic descriptions. There are fabulous portraits of people, cityscapes, country scenes, etc. 

Nicholas, and to some extent his sister Kate, are a little different from many other Dickens protagonists. In modern language, they would be called “effective.” The siblings are very assertive. Nicholas in particular uses both physical force and the power of language without hesitation to counter the malevolent acts of others.  The physical force that he employs is often justified and is often used to stop violence that is directed at weaker people. It all starts when he saves Smike from a brutal beating being administered by Squeers. As he does this, he administers a thorough thrashing of Squeers himself. As a young man in his prime, he is able to effectively and decisively apply this force. Furthermore, Nicholas usually articulates his positions and his reasoning with great effectiveness.  The assertiveness is not surprising. His ability to apply force is not surprising. His tendency to act virtuously and stand up for those weaker then himself is not surprising. However, I found that sometimes Nicholas is too good of an orator for a young man of his age. For instance, in the below passage Nicholas is trying to convince Madeline not to enter into what will clearly be a disastrous marriage with Gride.

‘I speak of this marriage,’ returned Nicholas, ‘of this marriage, fixed for tomorrow, by one who never faltered in a bad purpose, or lent his aid to any good design; of this marriage, the history of which is known to me, better, far better, than it is to you. I know what web is wound about you. I know what men they are from whom these schemes have come. You are betrayed and sold for money; for gold, whose every coin is rusted with tears, if not red with the blood of ruined men, who have fallen desperately by their own mad hands.’

As noted above, I find this level of speechmaking a little implausible for someone of Nicholas’s age. On the other hand, the loquaciousness is entertaining and adds drama to the story. 

Despite Nicholas’s positive attributes, I think that Dickens was trying to show that Nicholas can be a bit too overbearing and aggressive at times. At one point in the book, he takes it upon himself to lecture his own mother on virtue. Later, he nearly provokes an unnecessary fight with a playwright whom he dislikes. 

At one stage of the story, Nicholas and Smike are journeying through the countryside. Here, Dickens’s picturesque descriptions and Nicholas’s strong character both come into play,

The ground seemed elastic under their feet; the sheep-bells were music to their ears; and exhilarated by exercise, and stimulated by hope, they pushed onward with the strength of lions.

Onward they kept, with steady purpose, and entered at length upon a wide and spacious tract of downs, with every variety of little hill and plain to change their verdant surface. Here, there shot up, almost perpendicularly, into the sky, a height so steep, as to be hardly accessible to any but the sheep and goats that fed upon its sides, and there, stood a mound of green, sloping and tapering off so delicately, and merging so gently into the level ground, that you could scarce define its limits. Hills swelling above each other; and undulations shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by side, bounded the view in each direction; while frequently, with unexpected noise, there uprose from the ground a flight of crows, who, cawing and wheeling round the nearest hills, as if uncertain of their course, suddenly poised themselves upon the wing and skimmed down the long vista of some opening valley, with the speed of light itself.

I find the above passage particularly interesting. It seems to embody much that is typically Dickens, but also the uniqueness of Nicholas’s character.  It is bursting with Dickens’s usual powerful descriptions as the Hills swelling above each other; and undulations shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by side. I find that prose here to be sublime. 

But Nicholas and Smike are also compared to lions with a steady purpose. One gets a sense of Nicholas’s young strength in this passage. As noted above, Nicholas does embody many aspects of a lion with a steady purpose in his character. This does not seem like typical Dickens to me. His protagonists usually do the right thing, but few, if any, embody the strength and decisiveness of the lion like Nicholas does. One can make an argument that Samuel Pickwick in the Pickwick Paperswas equally strong and assertive in his own way. However, Pickwick was a much older man who had previously lived a life filled with both financial and social successes. 

Like most Dickens books, this work was published in installments. This fact seemed more apparent here than in other Dickens novels that I have read. The work feels episodic. At several points, long before the end, it feels like the story has wrapped up and is heading for its conclusion. I think that a tighter structure would have made this a stronger novel. 

In the end, this is another brilliant portrait by Dickens. As I have written before, I do not read this author for a realistic portrait of the world. Instead, I look at his works as an exaggerated but brilliant reflection of reality. Along the way, there is much for a reader to absorb and to enjoy. Though perhaps not up to the level of Bleak Houseor David Copperfield, this book is very much worth the read for Dickens fans. 

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

The Pickwick Papers was Charles Dickens’s first novel. It tells the story of Samuel Pickwick and the other members of the Pickwick Club. The group is comprised of members who journey around England with a goal of studying human nature. Hence, the narrative is episodic and anecdotal. 

Over the course of their very amusing travels, the Pickwickians encounter all sorts of colorful characters, experience many adventures and mishaps, and consume lots of food and drink. They are an affable but pretentious group. This creates plenty of opportunities for humor. The book reminded me in many ways of Don Quixote. 

The Pickwickians include: Nathaniel Winkle, who claims to be a sportsman, but who generally makes a fool of himself whenever he engages in any sport and Augustus Snodgrass, who is a man who claims to be a poet but who seems to write no poetry. Also included is Tracy Tupman, who is a self-proclaimed ladies’ man but is clownish and overweight. Sam Weller is Mr. Pickwick’s loyal servant. His smart aleck sense of humor and charm makes him, for me, the most entertaining character in the book. For his part, Mr. Pickwick is overweight and good natured but bit silly and pompous. There are numerous additional colorful characters, including drunken medical students and malevolent attorneys. 

There are also many side stories. Often, the characters, both major and minor, tell tales ranging from accounts of everyday events to the fantastical. There are also several underlying plot threads that pop up throughout the novel. One is the misunderstanding and subsequent legal battle between Mrs. Martha Bardell and Mr. Pickwick. Mrs. Bardell is a widow who is Mr. Pickwick’s landlady. She mistakes Mr. Pickwick’s naturally friendly and courteous disposition for romantic interest and a marriage proposal. This leads to not only hurt feelings but to a legal battle that resurfaces at various points in the narrative. Another subplot involves conman Alfred Jingle and his servant, who vex the Pickwickians at several points in the story.

The narrative is, with occasional exceptions, light, funny and entertaining. At times I found myself laughing out loud. Pickwick and his associates are often silly and buffoonish. With that, they all display a sense of decency and act charitably towards others. 

In this early Dickens effort, many of the themes and plot devices that will appear later are present here in a less developed form. Dickens’s contempt for the legal profession, fully developed in Bleak House, manifests itself in this work. Attorneys involved in his legal proceedings are shown to be inefficient, cruel and unethical. The side story of Gaberial Grub, a sexton with a nasty personality, is a precursor of A Christmas Carol. Grub is confronted on Christmas Eve by an army of goblins who excoriate him for his malicious disposition. Motivated by fear, Grub eventually reforms his ways. Like later Dickens, the book is full of colorful and over the top characters. 

I also think that the way that Dickens portrays the world throughout his books can be partially seen in this one. Though the tone of most of this novel is light, something dark in the universe manifests itself from time to time. At one point, Mr. Pickwick is in conversation with “The Dismal Man,” a philosophical but depressed character that the Pickwickians encounter in their travels. 

"‘Did it ever strike you, on such a morning as this, that drowning would be happiness and peace?’ ‘God bless me, no!’ replied Mr. Pickwick, edging a little from the balustrade, as the possibility of the dismal man’s tipping him over, by way of experiment, occurred to him rather forcibly. ‘I have thought so, often,’ said the dismal man, without noticing the action. ‘The calm, cool water seems to me to murmur an invitation to repose and rest. A bound, a splash, a brief struggle; there is an eddy for an instant, it gradually subsides into a gentle ripple; the waters have closed above your head, and the world has closed upon your miseries and misfortunes for ever.’ The sunken eye of the dismal man flashed brightly as he spoke, but the momentary excitement quickly subsided;"

Having read a fair amount of Dickens over the years, I find that the way that he describes the dark aspect of existence to be somewhat similar throughout his writings. Dickens clearly shows that there is a good side to existence. However, this gloomy aspect is always there. 

I also think that it is interesting that Dickens often shows the good side of humanity in the form of charity and compassion for others. In this novel, Mr. Pickwick does show much of that. The positive angle to existence is also shown here in the form of good cheer and fellowship. 

On a related note, Dickens’s social consciousness, which manifests itself so strongly in his later works, also appears in this book. When Mr. Pickwick loses his legal case, he refuses to pay the damages on principle. He voluntarily goes to debtor prison. There, he encounters human suffering and injustice that appalls him. One of many people that he encounters is a man whose life has been ruined after twenty years of imprisonment.  

"The Chancery prisoner had been there long enough to have lost his friends, fortune, home, and happiness… Mr. Pickwick surveyed him with a painful interest. He was a tall, gaunt, cadaverous man, in an old greatcoat and slippers, with sunken cheeks, and a restless, eager eye. His lips were bloodless, and his bones sharp and thin. God help him! the iron teeth of confinement and privation had been slowly filing him down for twenty years."

The above quotes are not representative of this novel as a whole. As stated above, the book is mostly humorous, upbeat and extols the virtues of good cheer and friendship. 

I enjoyed The Pickwick Papers a lot. I found it to be very funny and entertaining. This book was pleasant to read. It also contains Dickens’s signature prose as well as multiple over the top characters.  I also found it interesting how so many ideas that the author used later on seem to originate in this novel. Though this would not be the first Dickens that I would read, it is a fine book for those who have already read and liked the famous author.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is a very famous novel. Many people who have not read the book itself have likely seen film or stage adaptions. Others may be familiar with the story just from hearing and reading what others have said or written about it. Although this is a reread for me, it has been a very long time since I last read this book.

For those unfamiliar with the tale, this is a chronicle of the early years of Oliver’s life. Oliver is an orphan. The book opens with his mother’s death in childbirth. The novel’s protagonist spends his first nine years in a workhouse and for a short time apprentices to an undertaker. During this time, he is subjected to both physical and mental abuse meted out by various malevolent characters. Unable to take the cruelty any longer, Oliver runs away to London. There he meets a band of young thieves controlled and led by the nefarious Fagin.

Oliver also encounters various benevolent people, including the wealthy and compassionate Mr. Brownlow and the virtuous young girl, Rose Maylie. These people show him affection and try to help him. Much of the narrative concerns itself with Fagin and his malicious friends holding Oliver against his will or trying to kidnap him away from the decent people for their own evil purposes.

Because this work is so famous and is often read by children, I think that people tend to underestimate just how original and imaginative it is. A fresh reading of this book reveals its strangeness.  I use the term strange in a good way. The world that Dickens creates here is a feast for the imagination. This is a surreal novel. Both characters and locations are described as grotesque, bizarre and extreme ways,

The initial description of Fagin is a good example. He is painted as,

“very old shriveled… whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed in a greasy flannel gown, with his throat bare”

The word  “phantasmagoric” is often used to describe the world that Dickens builds. Having read more than a few of his books, this effort seems the most over the top in this novel.  I find the entire effect to be a marvel of creativity.

There is a lot going on in this work.  So much has been said about it. I want to write a few words about one particular aspect.

There is something that is present in multiple Dickens novels. It is an observation that there is great pain and suffering in the universe. Furthermore, death is inevitable. Death, however, can seem almost a comfort. At one point, after some particularly arduous experiences, Oliver drifts off to sleep.

“Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of life; to all its cares for the present; its anxieties for the future; more than all, its weary recollections of the past! “

Similar passages can be found throughout the narrative. The pain of life is compared to the peace of inevitable death. However, Dickens is no nihilist. He finds a source of hope in a world full of suffering and death.

Mr. Brownlow is an older man. At one point, he observes how the people that he has loved most in the world are dead. Though saddened by this reality, he takes comfort and solace in the act of helping others. He observes that he will help Oliver, despite the fact that people in similar circumstances have taken advantage of his kindness,

“I have been deceived, before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless; and I am more interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself.

The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, forever, on my best affections. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them.' “

This is a line of philosophy that manifested itself in other Dickens novels. The world is a cruel and nasty place. Death awaits everyone. However, solace can be found in helping others. Charity and altruism can counteract the darkness.

I wrote more about this tendency Dickens’s novels here.

I want mention the fact that this book has been called anti-Semitic. In his time, Dickens was accused of being bigoted against Jews for his portrayal of Fagin. Again and again, the criminal is referred to as “the Jew.” This was laid on so heavily that it did strike me as anti-Semitic. Dickens denied the allegations. In response, he subsequently spoke out against anti-Semitism throughout his career and had the word “Jew” omitted in some versions of the book.  Furthermore, in his work of In Our Mutual Friend, he attacked anti-Semitism and tried to highlight the plight of Jewish people exposed to it. I think one can conclude that Dickens did show ugly bias when he wrote this book. It seems that he came to regret this and made serious efforts to make up for it.

There was a time that I had mixed feelings about Dickens and his exaggerated world views as well as his over use of one-dimensional characters and coincidences.   However, I have come to realize that he was not the kind of writer, such as Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope, who tried to portray the human condition in a realistic way. Instead, I have come to appreciate the surreal, exaggerated picture of people and reality that he creates. As he builds this image of the world, he does so with equally flamboyant prose. Dickens created a unique fictional world that was fantastic and original. In some ways, this book can be seen as a kind of fantasy. His books also include his important social commentary and insightful philosophy as well as very entertaining stories. Thus, I have come to see him as a writer who was brilliantly creative. Oliver Twist is among his most vividly brilliant creations.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I have read Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield for the first time. I am sorry that I waited so long. This novel, despite its flaws, is enjoyable, meaningful, artistic is one of the most famous books ever written and has had a great cultural impact.

This is a chronicle of the fictional David Copperfield’s life. It follows him from his earliest infancy through adulthood. It is the story of self-awakening, education, abuse, emotional turmoil, friendship, love and a lot more.

Born after the death of his father, David is left with a mother who loves him, but is terribly weak and who allows her new husband Edward Murdstoneand and Murdstone’s sister Jane, to abuse him. Eventually his mother also dies, and David endures years of physical and emotional abuse and neglect until he escapes to the safety and protection of his eccentric, but benevolent aunt, Betsey Trotwood. Though the years David encounters various interesting and colorful characters ranging from the saintly to the downright evil. He experiences love, difficulty in love, as well as tragedy and death. At the heart of this book is the central love story focusing upon the decades long relationship between David and his childhood friend, Agnes Wickfield.

So much can be said about this work, and volumes have been written about it. As I often do, I will focus upon just one small part of this story.

Dickens is sometimes criticized as being one dimensional and superficial. In the past I have had similar impressions. Though I see more to his writing, I also believe that these views are not completely unfounded. Though his characters are marvelously fun and amusing, some can be described as simplistic caricatures.

With Dickens however, there is more then meets the eye. In the psychology of his characters, his plot, his themes, and his prose, there seems to be underlying manifestations of complicated things. I want to devote a few words to what seems to be something sinister integrated into Dickens’s reality.

There is something dark lurking behind many corners of the Universe built by Dickens in this work. Of course the book is filled with pernicious characters who do all sorts of terrible things. As a result good people suffer. But it gets a little more complex. It seems that Dickens might be saying that such evil is built into reality. I think that this is exemplified by certain descriptive passages.

Take the below description of a very run down London neighborhood,

“The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished, rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which— having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet weather— they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout;”

The first thing that strikes me about the above passage is its rhetorical power. Dickens was a great describer of people and things. His greatness was not in realism; instead he was at his best when describing highly exaggerated, almost dreamlike depictions of reality. These descriptions ranged from joyful, to sad. But when these depictions were dark, as they are in the above passage, they resemble nightmares.

Here we have prose that exudes death and despair. Dickens presents us with a human made wasteland scattered with the monsters of industrialization. This is an amazing representation of Industrial Revolution nihilism. I think it is important, that the one vestige of human connection, houses, were never completed and are now abandoned. Even the printed material concerns itself with death. The slime and growth being compared to green hair is a horrifying touch.

As there is in reality there some mystery to evil, some horrors are apparent and some are not, as some of the objects have partially sunk into the ground, obscuring their nature.

Is the allusion to the prison symbolic of how life can be a prison for some people? Certainly many of Dickens’s characters find themselves trapped in terrible situations.

The rumor of a mass grave originating from the plague years only adds to the gloominess and the reminder of the inevitability of death.

The above is clearly a critique of industrialization that is worthy commentary in its own right.  But I think that this and similar scenes in this novel are trying to illustrate something dark that is woven into the Universe.

There are other hints regarding this darkness. For instance, Mr. Dicks, an eccentric but oddly wise character, is haunted in his daily life by thoughts of King Charles I, whose historical murder seems symbolic of something very wrong in the Universe. There are many other instances in this novel where this darkness is explored in all sorts of ways. I think that Dickens goes a little beyond a simple good verses evil comparison. Instead this perniciousness seems to be embedded into the Universe in a way that is not completely able to separate from good.

There seems to be an antidote to this darkness. Dickens was fascinated by, and advocated for human kindness and empathy. When his characters display these positive traits, it seems to be an effective counterpoint to the darkness. At one point Martha Endell, a young women who has fallen into disrepute, declines an offer of money in exchange for providing assistance to David’s friend Emily, who has fallen into terrible straits. Though in need of this help Martha declines it.

'I could not do what I have promised, for money,' she replied. 'I could not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away the only certain thing that saves me from the river.”

The above reference to the river seems to have double meaning as Martha has alluded to suicide and death in the water. It also seems to have a metaphorical meaning, as the part of the Thames that runs though industrial London also seems to represent the maleficent force in he Universe.

This darkness inherent in creation is presented in a complex way and appears throughout the novel in the characters, plot, as well as other descriptive passages.  I find that the above passages to be very aesthetically effective descriptions of this wicked influence. The book is filled with interesting explorations on this subject. This is just one of many reasons that David Copperfield deserves its reputation as an all time classic.

Albert Camus’s The Plague and Charles Dickens

The title of this post may have my readers scratching their heads. After all, what on Earth can Albert Camus’s The Plague have in common with the works of Charles Dickens? Usually Camus is compared with such existentialist thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Charles Sartre. Stepping outside what is usually considered existentialist theory will, I think, yield some surprises. In my opinion, there are important and significant similarities and, of course, differences between the ideas expressed in The Plague and the worldview of Dickens.

One of the primary themes of Albert Camus’s The Plague is the fight against human suffering and the sacrifices that individuals and groups must make in order to engage in this struggle. In my commentary here, I explored how Camus took a very unconventional approach to the very old subject of sacrifice for the good of others, altruism, compassion, etc. I could simply contrast this approach to traditional thinking. However, when I think about a novelist whose work has come to embody the championing of these better aspects of human nature, if only in a different way, I think of none other then Charles Dickens.

As I ruminated in my previous post on the work, Camus’s novel vigorously advocates human exertion in the name of helping to ameliorate suffering and pain. In fact, I think that The Plague can be viewed as an argument that this form of altruism is the key to finding meaning in life. Acting in such a way may be the only thing that makes any sense in a malign universe.

Dickens’s stories also commonly exemplify sacrifice, charity and compassion for others. Again and again, aid to the sick, the poor and the distressed is extolled as extremely virtuous and noble. Dickens’s look at this form of righteousness is more or less the traditional view and is similar to the thinking that runs throughout many of the world’s religions, philosophies and cultures. 

Instances in Dickens’s writing are so numerous and well known that it is almost unnecessary to provide examples. For instance, the plot of A Tale of Two Cities hinges in Sydney Carton’s sacrifice of his own life to save Charles Darnay. In doing so, he finds the ultimate meaning to his existence. Ebenezer Scrooge is, of course, our society’s poster boy for the degenerating effects of selfishness and the redemptive powers of bestowing charity. Almost any Dickens work will provide additional examples. 

When it comes to finding purpose in life through alleviating human misery, both authors have reached the very same endpoint. However, both have arrived at this destination by following very different routes.

Camus approaches the problem from a view of a universe where there is either no God or, if there is a God, he is one who plays no part in day-to-day human affairs and who has created a reality where justice does not exist. Though I believe Dickens sees the world through a Christian belief system, oddly enough, his realities behave in ways very similar to that of the reality seen in The Plague. Although justice is often served and there are happy endings, at other times very bad things happen to innocent and good people. Often, chaos runs free in the world unchecked with no end in site. When good does triumph, it usually does so through the good actions of people.

But the two authors’ views on these matters are also very different, even diametrically opposed, in many ways. Dickens can be described as a super sentimentalist. He throws gallons of emotion both at his depictions of human suffering as well as at corresponding altruistic action and sacrifice. His works are full of famous, powerful and affecting death scenes. 

In contrast, Camus rejects all sentimentality. As I pointed out in my first post, he sees altruism as a rational response to an irrational world. He views good works as simply a sensible reaction to an insensible universe.

There is indeed a terrible death scene in The Plague, during which a young boy who is stricken with the plague dies an excruciating death. Although the passage is extremely disturbing, it is grim, clinical and unsentimental.

The narrator of the story describes how the boy dies,

In the small face, rigid as a mask of grayish clay, slowly the lips parted and from them rose a long, incessant scream, hardly varying with his respiration, and filling the ward with a fierce, indignant protest, so little childish that it seemed like a collective voice issuing from all the sufferers there.   

Compare this to Dickens’s description of the death of the orphan Johnny in Our Mutual Friend. As Johnny dies, he thinks of Bella, “the boffor lady” who has been kind to him.

With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he stretched his little figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on the sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith's face with his lips, said: 'A kiss for the boofer lady.’

I must admit that in contrast to Camus’s passage of horror, Dickens seems laughably melodramatic here.

Dickens also throws copious accolades upon those who perpetuate good acts. After Sydney Carton’s sacrifice, Darnay, Darnay’s wife and Darnay’s descendants all remember him with gratitude and tributes for generations. 

Camus sees these altruistic deeds very differently, 

The essential thing was to save the greatest possible number of persons from dying and being doomed to unending separation. And to do this there was only one resource: to fight the plague. There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.   

Later, Camus’s narrator goes on to some interesting observations about individuals who have joined the “Sanitary Squads.” These units are designed to combat the plague, but they put their members in extreme peril,

However, it is not the narrator’s intention to ascribe to these sanitary groups more importance than their due. Doubtless today many of our fellow citizens are apt to yield to the temptation of exaggerating the services they rendered. But the narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy are the general rule. The narrator does not share that view

Thus, good works are not just rational, but they are already more common than we tend to think.

Dickens also extolled individual action. His heroes and heroines more usually act alone in their attempts at making the world better. Once again Sydney Carton is a good example of this, as he acts on his own and even in secret when he sacrifices his life to save Darnay. Of course Scrooge also acts almost entirely as an individual after his redemption. 

In contrast, Camus strongly exhorts people to band together in groups in order to alleviate human pain. He seems to reject extreme government forms of societal organization such as communism. Instead, he seems to contend that people are most effective when they voluntarily join together. 

When organizing the Sanitary Groups, Jean Tarrou strategizes,

Officialdom can never cope with something really catastrophic. And the remedial measures they think up are hardly adequate for a common cold. If we let them carry on like this they’ll soon be dead, and so shall we…I’ve drawn up a plan for voluntary groups of helpers. Get me empowered to try out my plan, and then let’s sidetrack officialdom.

Without a doubt, Dickens’s views on these matters are more popular. Though he is over-the-top in his use of sentiment at times, I am more partial to his approach. I do think that I understand what Camus was saying, and I believe that it follows a logical process; however, it seems that it does not reflect the reality of human nature. 

Dickens extolled warm and strong emotions as the primary driver of altruism. I would argue that Dickens understands human behavior better. People need sentimentality, enthusiasm and energy in order to fight against the misery and injustice inherent in the Universe. While I find Camus’s view a fascinating intellectual exercise, ironically, Dickens’s approach seems much more practical. Hand in hand with this idea is the fact that strong positive emotions surrounding self-sacrifice make the pain of such sacrifice a bit less painful, thus alleviating suffering in and of itself.

At the end of my little intellectual foray, I humorously thought about what The Plague would have been like if Dickens had written it. I can imagine the book retaining the same basic plot. The theme of self-sacrifice in order to assuage the suffering and loss to others could likewise remain intact. Putting aside the different way in which he would portray characters, I think that Dickens’s version of the book would include one or more tearful and extremely overemotional death scenes that would almost descend into parody.  Dr. Rieux and the volunteers who assisted others during the crisis would be memorialized with homages consisting of a generous heaping of laudatory prose from both the other characters as well as the author.

It may seem a bit odd to compare these two writers. I set out to show that are major similarities, at least in the way both look at issues relating to life’s meaning and purpose. For me, the fact that these commonalities exist makes the differences all the more interesting.