Huckleberry Finn begins, “You don’t know me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter” (Twain 7). This opening passage helps the reader assume that, due to his use of slang, Huck is not well educated. The way Twain wrote allowed the reader to get a sense of the way people spoke back then and how different society was from the society of today. Due to his use of the common language, “’all modern American literature comes directly from … Huckleberry Finn” (Trilling 6). Alone, this profound influence on all American literature makes Huckleberry Finn worthy of being included in the canon of great American literature, but his exploration into a revolutionary relationship between a white boy and a runaway slave make it even more worthy.
Charles Dickens was known as a social reformist and so particularly wrote novels about social class. Dickens wrote ‘Great Expectations’ to draw attention to the issue of how different the lives were of the rich and the poor. This had never been done before, so it engages the reader. This was done using the characters, language, setting, historical context and narrative perspective. Dickens engages the reader by using different interesting characters.
Point (parenthetical documentation) a. Explanation/sub point b. Explanation/sub point 2. Point (parenthetical documentation) a. Explanation/sub point b. Explanation/sub point B. [Topic] 1. Point (parenthetical documentation) a. Explanation/sub point b. Explanation/sub point 2. Point (parenthetical documentation) a. Explanation/sub point b. Explanation/sub
The Printing press was, without a doubt, the most famous creation of the era. This is portrayed though the print shop apprentices in The Great Cat Massacre. The Prinnting Press also began to intellectualize the lower class as more knowledge was being passed and spread through them. The 18th century was home to the idea of Humanism. Humanism recognized new ideas for classes and learning as well as ideas and religion.
Du Bois were right that the problem of the twentieth century is racism, one would never know it from the average secondary-school syllabus, which often avoids issues of race almost completely. However, Huck Finn can slip into the American literature classroom as a "classic," only to engulf students in heated debates about prejudice and racism, conformity, autonomy, authority, slavery and freedom. It is a book that puts on the table the very questions the culture so often tries to bury, a book that opens out into the complex history that shaped it; the history of the ante-bellum era in which the story is set, and the history of the post-war period in which the book was written. It also requires us to address that history. Much of that history is painful.
Dickens demonstrations here that Tiny Tim is the most vulnerable of all the lower class yet he is one of the most giving and happy members of the lower class, which puts shame on Scrooge and his fellow upper class men. I was going to write about how Dickens uses the 3 ghosts to turn Scrooge around which shows the people of his time how anyone can change and has good in them and that it is not hard to change, just to accept the others around you. Not only did Charles Dickens pen a novella that will be seen for many decades to come, Dickens uses this novella to try and get his point across to the people of his time, and how in which both the upper and middle classes were to get along and how to get along with each other. Dickens does socially commentate on his time more than trying to pen this novella into a religious moral
While reading Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations, we see the portrayal of social status and snobbery repeatedly represented throughout both novels. It was the common theme in both and it was represented strongly by the characters that evolved throughout them. During the 1800’s, social status was a very important factor in peoples’ lives and we see that through Jane Austen and Charles Dickens’ works, how it influenced both of them and their writings. Great expectations has been described as a story of a 'snobs progress' as we see Pip transition from a young boy at the forge to a gentleman, in this essay I will discuss the ways in which Dickens keeps the readers sympathy for Pip even though at times his rude behaviour has shocked readers. Also I will explore snobbery in other characters in the novel which I will compare to Pride and Prejudice.
As in many other of his books, Dickens uses his character’s personalities to represent the attitudes of society. He demonstrates their pure selfishness, shown through his characters, during the times of the industrial revolution, where the idea of reform was rife. Mr Bumble is one of the main characters presented by Dickens in Chapter Four of ‘Olive Twist’. The speech and attitude of Bumble is very distinctive throughout the whole of the novel, in terms of his own arrogance and self-righteousness. Bumble greets Mr Sowerberry by shaking his hand, ignoring what Sowerberry says and repeats, ‘You’ll make your fortune, Mr Sowerberry,’ twice.
John Steinbeck and The Dust Bowl John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is a novel that deals with a broad spectrum of issues and human conditions. Steinbeck deals with topics such as intolerance, labor relations, greed, isolation, poverty, and the human spirit. Even though the original book was published in 1939, the novel is still widely read and in many schools is required reading for English classes. Steinbeck opened the eyes of America with his portrait of human suffering and the working conditions in parts of this country. John Steinbeck wrote from firsthand experience and from what he had witnessed happening in the United States.
The debate surrounding the essay is in judging Twain’s depiction of the “negro” Jim and its relation to past and present racial discourse. Smith is writing at a time where most respectable circles condemn the practice of slavery, yet many still blindly accuse Twain of being a racist out of a lack of understanding of the novel. These “respectable” circles and the schoolteachers, literary professors, modern critics, and libraries they influence are the target of Smith’s words. They are the educated, the part of society that is most likely to come across Huckleberry Finn, and Smith argues that their blind outrage