Charles Dickens and Samuel Clemens
(1812-1870) (1835-1910)
Charles Dickens and Samuel Clemens lived in different parts of the world, England and America. Charles Dickens was twenty-three years old when Samuel Clemens was born. Charles Dickens was a boy who loved learning, while Samuel Clemens could hardly wait for school to end. Despite the fact that both authors reference Christianity and its customs, historians believe that Charles Dickens was a Christian whereas Samuel Clemens was not.
The similarities between Charles Dickens and Samuel Clemens are numerous. Both authors are world famous legends who wrote many novels, created many characters, had an autobiographical character, and based characters on people in their lives. Samuel Clemens used the pen name Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, for a brief time, used the pen name Boz. Both authors worked as journalists and wrote until the day they died. Their life experiences were reflected in their writings and the period in which they wrote was merely an account of what was really happening in history.
England in the early years of the seventeenth century enjoyed the regency of the Prince of Wales, went to war with the United States and watched Napoleon’s final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. During this time, one of the world’s greatest morally and socially responsible novelists, Charles Dickens was born in Portsea, England in 1812. Charles was the second child and the oldest son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. Charles’ early years were happy especially during the ages of 5-9. He loved school, was imaginative and had a hunger for reading. Charles Dickens: A Literary Life page 47 describes the collection of books in the attic that Charles would read as if it were a matter of life or death. Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Arabian Nights and The Tales of the Genii, was reading material not suitable for a child, yet all of these stories influenced the novels Dickens would eventually write. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. Charles had a carefree life. He and his friends wore white beaver hats and called themselves Giles’ Cats. His parents had many parties and invited many friends, but the problem was that they spent more money than they had. By the time Charles was ten his family had lived in six different houses and each one was poorer and poorer than the one before. There were eight children and the family fell deeper and deeper into debt.
One of the major stands that were made during a black athlete’s tenure during his or her sport were their statements on racism. Racism in America was an ongoing situation in the 1900’s that seemed to have no resolve before black athletes took a stand. One prime example can be Jackie Robinson who became the first African-American athlete to play baseball in the modern era. Jackie grew up in one of the most racist towns in Pasadena, California and came from a poor family as his parents were sharecroppers and...
Charles Dickens born February 7th 1812 – 9th June 1870 is a highly remarkable novelist who had a vision to change wealthy people’s scrutiny on the underprivileged and by fulfilling the dream he writes novels. Furthermore, I think that Dickens wrote about poverty as he had experiences this awful incident in his upbringings.
On April 15th 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie, went without a hit in a game which would have been noted only in sports almanacs were it not for the color of his skin. At Ebbet's Field that day, Robinson broke baseball's “color barrier.” The integration of Black athletes into White mainstream sports had begun. Robinson endured a variety of slanderous yells, racial epithets and even hurled objects. The fact that African Americans would be discriminated against in sports was never more apparent. Today, that same vitriol manifests itself in various forms of discrimination. Rhetorical forms of discrimination are just as damaging today as outright bigotry was then. Though rhetorical racism is not as overt, it continually influences an audience that is largely unaware of its existence.
On February 7, 1812, a popular author named Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England during the Victorian Era and the French Revolution. He had a father named John Dickens and a mother named Elizabeth Dickens; they had a total of eight children. In Charles’s childhood, he lived a nomadic lifestyle due to his father 's debt and multiple changes of jobs. Despite these obstacles, Charles continued to have big dreams of becoming rich and famous in the future. His father continued to be in and out of prison, which forced him, and his siblings to live in lodging houses with other unwanted children. During this period of depression, Charles went to numerous schools and worked for a boot cleaning company. This caused him
On September twenty-second in the year 1862, President Abraham Lincoln executively ordered the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. This command declared the freedom of all slaves in the ten Confederate States of America. Slavery was completely abolished in all states with the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment on December sixth in the year 1865. Since then African Americans have been free to live their lives without being owned, claimed, bought, or sold. Although this was a start, it definitely was not enough for African Americans to be considered equal. With all of the progression African Americans and other minorities have made, there are still obstacles the modern day ethnic-American faces. Some of these obstacles lay within a shared interest amongst Americans, sports. It has been hypothesized in the journal article “Race and Pathways to Power in the National Football League” by author Jomills Henry Braddock II, that a retired African American athlete would face struggles when trying to move into the coaching field or front office positions (Braddock 2012, 712). In the journal article, “Weighing in on the Coaching Decision: Discussing Sports and Race Online,” author Jimmy Sanderson explains to readers that the realm of the sports world has been heavily linked to white ideology (Sanderson 2010, 302). One cannot fully live the American Dream without sustaining successful and promising career goals. It is possible that people of color can get their foot on the first rung of the corporate ladder but actually climbing their way towards the top has proven to be a difficult and almost impossible task. It is evident that affirmative action has not been able to protect minorities from stereotypes and discrimination...
Often in life, influences by people’s social and cultural environments reveals many characteristics of their personalities. Similar to life, authors will write novels based on their surroundings. Author Charles Dickens wrote many novels and stories that relate to his life during the Victorian Era. One of Dickens works that can reflect his life and true historical events of this era is the novel, A Tale of Two Cities. The novel sets in the two cities, England and France, and follows the issues of characters that lead up to the French Revolution. Influences from Charles Dickens childhood and life allow him to write the novel A Tale of Two Cities and make it relate to his own experiences creating a deeper understanding to readers of how people
Born in 1812 Charles Dickens grew up in a small town in London. Dickens grew up in a poor family. His family, sent to debtors∙ jail before he became old enough to fend for himself, convinced him to find work and stay out of the jail. Dickens worked anywhere, from law offices to newspapers as a young child. (∜New Standard Encyclopedia∠D-155) A Christmas Carol, written by Dickens, has changed many things in the world today, especially Christmas traditions and religion.
In almost all the movies we have seen, the women go through a series of changes as they grow older. They might or might not choose to continue with their sport (although movies are usually shy of showing women who actually choose to abandon a blossoming sports career in favour of something more 'socially acceptable'). However, when we first meet the female heroine in almost all the movies, she is a young tomboy. The figures of Jess in 'Bend It Like Beckham' or Monica in 'Love and Basketball' are remarkably similar as children. They both wear boyish clothes, shun typically girly clothing, and prefer to spend their time with boys. Of course, the movies make it amply clear that these girls only want to play sports with the boys – they have no sexual interest in them. In 'Bend It Like Beckham', for example, Jess is clearly contrasted with the other Indian girls who watch the local boys playing football not because they like the game but because they want to see the boys with their shirts off. Even in 'Love and Basketball', Monica loves Quincy, but she never lets him see that until after prom night; before then, they are simply neighbours, friends and ballplayers. Even in a movie like 'Remember the Titans', which has no clear female protagonist, the little girl is shown hanging around boys all the time with her father, but she too has no interest in them except as sportsmen.
Mark Twain was a catalyst for the American education reform movement and the social changes that it brought. By writing in a style that the common man could relate to, he opened a nations eyes to problems, within the nation, that may have gone undetected.
The appearance of a person in general is one of the most important causes of stereotypes. People usually tend to stereotype a person from what they see and think. In Brent Staples’s “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space,” he experienced a certain stereotype from a white woman because of his appearance. He explained, “To her, the youngish black man—a broad six feet two inches with a bread and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket—seemed menacing close” (Staples 343). That white woman labeled Staples as a dangerous person who might hurt her, so she ran away as soon as she could. In other words, people usually define “‘suspicious characters’” as “‘swarthy’ or ‘dark and foreign-looking’” (Heilbroner 372). Moreover, “[m]ixed cultural signals have perpetuated certain stereotypes” (Ortiz Cofer 378). Ortiz Cofer experienced the typical stereotype as a Hispanic woman in the United States. For instance, the Latin women are usually viewed as the “‘hot tamale’” by using the words like “‘sizzling’” or “‘smoldering’” for definitions...
The Life of Samuel Clemens A.K.A. Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens is better known as Mark Twain, the distinguished novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, and literary critic who ranks among the great figures of American Literature. Twain was born in Florida Missouri, in 1835, To John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton. As a new born Twain already had moved four times westward. In 1839 the family moved again, this time eastward to Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal was a frontier town of less than 500 residents. As small as the town was it offered valuable materials and opportunities for a young writer. Most of the residents knew Samuel well, considering they were on the lower half of the social scale, such as poor whites and slaves. The town of Hannibal was mostly used for farmers coming in from the countryside. It was also a river town, swamped with travelers moving up stream and down stream. Some of the travelers were steamboat men, circus performers, minstrel companies, and showboat actors. Since all this action was going on all the time, that opened a big door to the beginning of Samuel’s stories. It provided a huge source of literary material. Shortly after the death of his father in 1847, he ended the brief period of his schooling to become a printer’s apprentice. Like many nineteenth century authors, he was preparing for his writing career later in life. Working as a Printer’s apprentice he got practice as a typesetter and miscellaneous reading. The first thing Samuel wrote as a used piece was a few skits for his brothers Orion’s Hannibal newspaper and a sketch, for The Dandy Frightening The Squatter, published in Boston in 1852. The first real book ever published by Mark Twain was Life on the Mississippi River. Between 1853 and 1857 Clemens worked a journeyman printer in seven different places. During this trip of making sketches and writing stories, he began eastward by boat. Twain started writing letters telling about his visits to New York and the Middle West in 1867. On his trip he seemed to have gotten him self in a lot a trouble such as disorderly conduct. After time passed Mark kept writing short stories here and there and a few sketches also. However, in 1869 he became part owner of the Buffalo Express. In 1870 Mark met the girl of his dreams and Olivia Langdon and
Historical and sociological research has shown, through much evidence collection and analysis of primary documents that the American sporting industry can give an accurate reflection, to a certain extent, of racial struggles and discrimination into the larger context of American society. To understand this stance, a deep look into aspects of sport beyond simply playing the game must be a primary focus. Since the integration of baseball, followed shortly after by American football, why are the numbers of African American owners, coaches and managers so very low? What accounts for the absence of African American candidates from seeking front office and managerial roles? Is a conscious decision made by established members of each organization or is this matter a deeper reflection on society? Why does a certain image and persona exist amongst many African American athletes? Sports historians often take a look at sports and make a comparison to society. Beginning in the early 1980’s, historians began looking at the integration of baseball and how it preceded the civil rights movement. The common conclusion was that integration in baseball and other sports was indeed a reflection on American society. As African Americans began to play in sports, a short time later, Jim Crow laws and segregation formally came to an end in the south. Does racism and discrimination end with the elimination of Jim Crow and the onset of the civil rights movement and other instances of race awareness and equality? According to many modern sports historians and sociologists, they do not. This paper will focus on the writings of selected historians and sociologists who examine th...
“I am not an American, I am the American” (Duncan and Ward). Quoting his friend Frank Fuller, Twain boldly declares himself the embodiment of American living, and in all honesty, with some right to do so. Twain was born in 1835 to parents John and Jane Clemens under Halley’s Comet in Florida, Missouri and later moved to Hannibal. He would later die under the same comet 75 years later in 1910. He traveled along the American South and Midwest writing as he went, originally moving west with his brother, Orion, in 1861 hoping to strike it rich in Nevada’s silver rush (Ramussen). Twain’s real name was Samuel Longhorne Clemens but took on the name Mark Twain as a reference to a measurement in his job as steamboat captain, a job that would inspire many of his most famous books, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Due to his largely popular books that were told from the point of views of a young children, he is frequently referred to as a “chronicler of childhood” meaning he portrayed adolescence in a way that was both relatable to kids and adults, and was almost a record keeper of the American child’s imagination in his time. He was not like the cookie-cutter authors of his time who mimicked the writing style of English writers, and used his own style and flow of writing. Mark Twain catalyzed a change in American literature by finding his voice through his individuality and consequently encouraging other writers to follow suit.
For the first nine years of Dickens’s life, he was living in the coastal regions of Kent, however when Dickens was twelve his family moved to London. He lived with his mother, father and his seven brothers and sisters. His father, John Dickens was a pleasant man, but was very incompetent with money, and had enormous debt throughout his life. As a consequence of this, John Dickens was arrested and sent to debtors’ prison.
Dickens knew how hard-pressed life was for thousands of English families in mid-ninteenth century England, and he knew the legal side of such desperation--a jungle of suspicion and fear and hate. He was especially attentive [if] . . . hungry, jobless men, women, children with few if any prospects became reduced to a fate not only marginal with respect to its "socioeconomic" character but also with respect to its very humanity. (575)