Martin Chuzzlewit

   I am reading Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens at the moment. It is very humerous and the characters are so colourfully disagreeable and selfish! Dickens writes so humorously; the first chapter is devoted to the history of the Chuzzlewit family. He goes on and on insisting on how great the family is and all the while you are becoming convinced that the family must be the most disagreeable in all of England! The first paragraph begins:

      "As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to polite breeding, can possibly sympathise with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first assured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is a great satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly descended in a direct line from Adam and Eve..." 

    He writes sarcastically and pokes fun at the faults of mankind in general. To me each character seems to represent a whole kind of people rather than just an individual. There's Mr. Pecksniff who is "A moral man.....Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there: but those were his enemies; the shadows cast by his brightness..."  He is the schemer in the book (not the same as the two others of that name in the book, Jonas and his father who are openly cunning and commend a scheming man), he plots and plans while merely doing his "moral duty". Those kind of characters seem most threatening to the hero/heroine in a book because unknown is more foreboding.

   There seems to be three groups of characters in Charles Dickens' books generally speaking. The hero or heroine is good or has good intentions even if he is a little silly. And this includes the other good people in the book who don't seem to see any bad in anyone except themselves like Mr.Pinch and his sister. They are often a little boring. 

   The villains are always more colourful. there characters are well explored and are geniuses of scheming, but often in the end there very scheming catches them out. Even when there intentions towards the hero is not clear you know that they are not good ones and include getting there own gain at that persons expense. They are quite frightening really! The worst I think are Mr. Carker (the man with the teeth) in Dombey and Son and Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield.

   But the most interesting characters and the funniest are the other people who are not the main people but very necessary all the same. Like Captain Cuttle, Mr. Micawber and his family, and the tootles and Mark Tapley, and many more who all have good intentions even if they aren't always helpful and very understanding.

    I love all the Dickens books that I have read and will go as far as to think that I will equally love the rest when I get a chance to read them. His books are so delicious, you can savor them and get something new out of them in each re-reading!