In David Copperfield, Dickens has many relationships, which you can compare to one another throughout the story. Dickens loves using foils to create creative and interestingly detailed relationships, which can parallel and mirror the views of the Neoclassical and Romantic periods. In this essay I will compare and contrast two relationships. The two relationships that I have chosen are David’s relationship with Agnes Wickfield and then with James Steerforth. Agnes’s relationship with David is a profitable and healthy one whereas Steerforth’s with David reminds me of a doctor letting a sick person bleed out, it’s unhealthy and does no good. Both of these relationships have interesting similarities and foils to one another.
David’s relationship with Steerforth is an interesting one because it shows the effects of being around the wrongs kinds of people does to you. Steerforth appears as an upstanding youth head boy at Salem House and we are happy to see him befriend David after David’s life had fallen apart. But later on we see Steerforth’s true colors come out, when he runs off with Little Emily and then after awhile leaves her. In Chapter 24, David goes out to dinner with Steerforth and his friends and we see what effect the influence of Steerforth has on David. David becomes drunk, smokes and becomes a fool that night. David’s relationship with Steerforth is foolish, dependent, and Steerforth just uses David to get what he wants (Emily, etc.). I think that parental upbringing has a large part in how Steerforth acts, because Mrs. Steerforth gives her son so much attention and spoils him so much, that it’s harmful for him and ultimately leads to his downfall. In Mrs. Steerforth’s eyes, James can do no evil and so...
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... kill the developing “rose”. David’s friendship and future marriage with her is the best thing that could ever happen to him. When David is freed from the attachment to Steerforth it’s like a huge weight is lifted off the reader’s back, you have hope that David will be able to become his own person without the influence of someone like Steerforth. Today the same principle goes for youth. I know that a couple years ago if I hung around with people who were foolish and immoral, I tended to lean in the direction of becoming like them and never blossoming into my own person, my own rose. I worked very hard on that problem so that in college I can stand up for my beliefs and morals while being surrounded by immorality and having my faith tested, now I’ve gotten 99% better and I continue to grow in that area with the help of God, my teachers, and my parents.
The greatest conflict in the book was Man vs. Man for David, because he had to face his childhood of when his sister June had died due to down syndrome. This internal conflict led to the guilt he experienced when dealing with the secret of giving his daughter Phoebe away and lying to Norah(his wife) that Phoebe had died at birth. Norah and the family later realised Phoebe was alive but in that time frame before that the family was falling apart.
David Hayden, the son of Wesley and Gail, was the most loyal character in the book. One day David noticed Uncle frank walking out of the house in the middle of the day. David was an intelligent young boy who knew that something was off. Later that day David heard the news that Marie Little Soldier had died and it was not of natural causes. Guilt comes with loyalty. When a person witnesses a scene that was unlawful they are put into the middle of a paradigm. In this case, David, who knew Uncle Frank killed Marie, felt he was the only witness. For a twelve year old boy, David knew himself very well. He was able to find that his loyalty was to Marie and the rest of the family. Although David knew where his loyalty was he was sure that not everyone did know. "I wasn't protecting her-I no longer had any illusions that I could play that role-but I stayed out of loyalty.”(149). In spite of the fact that David had already designated his Loyalty to his family, he felt his loyalty was tested during the investigation. Davids instincts told him that the right thing to do was superset his father, but with his mother encouraging him to abandon his father, David felt he should neglect his instincts. For example, when the four men were sent by his grandfather to retrieve Unc...
Maturity changes the way people think act and behave towards other people, David the main character displays this clearly as his view on his Father and Uncle Frank develop and change. At the beginning when we are first introduce to all the characters , we see that David admires Uncle Franks as being a hero and just a all round qualities. But this is all changes when David later on discovers that Uncle Frank molesters and take advantage of Indian woman with his power as a doctor. “After what just happened with Marie I don’t want to be left alone with Uncle Frank”. Davis father is a sheriff, a very unique one as he does not wear a badge or carry any gun. David’s attitude towards his father also changes, David did not believe his father played the role of sheriff as he should have but this all changes when the incident with Uncle Frank and Maire is taken place. As Wesley doses t...
is a fight just to survive for the next day . As a child David is taught a very harsh way of
A loss of David’s innocence appears during his killing of a magpie. This “it can be done in a flick of the finger”. The particular significance about this plays an important part in his as he considers that he also is capable of committing such unfortunate yet immoral things. “Looking in the dead bird’s eye, I realised that these strange, unthought of connections - sex and death, lust and violence, desire and degradation - are there, there, deep in even a good heart’s chambers”.
At first, David cares that his mother treats him badly. After awhile, he doesn’t care and becomes apathetic.
1. In the book, the father tries to help the son in the beginning but then throughout the book he stops trying to help and listens to the mother. If I had been in this same situation, I would have helped get the child away from his mother because nobody should have to live like that. The father was tired of having to watch his son get abused so eventually he just left and didn’t do anything. David thought that his father would help him but he did not.
He has extremely low confidence and belief in himself which is to be expected since he is in unfamiliar territory. His father tries to teach David the ways his grandfather taught him. David’s father is a responsible hunter, he only hunts what is legal and not threatening them, “Are we going to shoot him? […] We don’t have a permit” (Quammen 420). One of the steps to adulthood is learning to be responsible when others are not around, at the age of 11, David learns young but rather unfortunately in the end. Morals and values are an important step to adulthood, like Albert Einstein once said “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” Having a solid set of values and good morals could be the difference in many of David’s future choices, and his father set him on the right path from an early age even though their relationship had several issues. This starts the journey to David’s mental strength shown throughout the story because it brings the right versus wrong to the center of attention. Taking care of family, taking care of the environment and the animals that inhabit the environment and not taking life for granted as he might have before tragedy struck are all part of the journey to adulthood. David’s father was extremely bothered by the moose that had been shot many times by a small caliber hand gun and the scene showed no signs of an attack; a senseless killing of an animal that was left to rot in a pond. David’s father wanted to teach him that if you were going to kill an animal, at least take the meat and use what you can from the
By making that decision to send his daughter away based on his past experience with his sick sister and an assumption about how the future will be. This connects to the ethical topic of techniques of neutralization by Joseph Heath. He uses an excuse to prove that his decision wasn’t unethical when it really was. According to the Denial of responsibility technique, he believed that he had no choice in sending Phoebe away, David saw it as the only option because he was so focused on his past experience. He imagined what Phoebe’s life would be like and the likely toll she would have on the family.
Throughout their relationship, Catherine tries more and more to control David. She forces him into cutting his hair and dying it like hers. She wants him to be just as darkly tanned as she is and drink the same drinks he drinks. She begins an argument over his clippings of reviews of his books and tells him she wishes h...
David finds it difficult communicating with her hence, attempts to express his feelings by writing to her but at the same time he fears that she won’t be able to apprehend what he is trying to
Hawthorne recognizes how structured the Puritan society andis discusses how one’s sins and actions can affect their standing in society. The main element of the novel, Hester’s scarlet letter, greatly attests to how sin alone can change your entire societal position. After receiving her letter, Hester “quote about living outside town” and is ostracized by the small community. Even the children begin to put Hester down, chanting awful things such as “let us fling mud at her”. TNothing about Hester has changed, she still works as a seamstress, the sole reason she moves to the bottom rung of the social ladder is due to her sins in a very religious society. On the opposite side of the spectrum lies Dimmesdale. As the local minister, Dimmesdale wields a lot of power in the town, but he is placed upon a pedestal as a prominent figure because the townspeople believe he is so pure. Even when Dimmesdale confesses that he has sinned, the townspeople only revere him more and believe that they are the ones who have sinned and are unholy. By the end of the book, Dimmesdale has inadvertently gathered enough support because people revere him that many doubted if heDimmesdale had sinned at all or “insert examples of how people think he died”. In a society dominated by religion, ministers, by their very nature, are
... middle of paper ... ... Although David tries to reject his homosexuality to retain his manhood, Baldwin suggests through the dominating spirit of the mother that David will not be able to escape from his true identity of the person. David's mother, as a symbol of his homosexuality, watches.
while later, David goes back home but quickly gets into trouble and is sent off
Our Mutual Friend, Dickens' last novel, exposes the reality Dickens is surrounded by in his life in Victorian England. The novel heavily displays the corruption of society through multiple examples. These examples, that are planted within the novel, relate to both the society in Dickens' writing and his reality. In order to properly portray the fraud taking place within his novels, Dickens' uses morality in his universe to compare to the reality of society. He repetitively references to the change of mind and soul for both the better and the worst. He speaks of the change of heart when poisoned by wealth, and he connects this disease to the balance of the rich and the poor. This is another major factor to novel, where the plot is surrounded by a social hierarchy that condemns the poor to a life of misery, and yet, condones any action that would normally be seen as immoral when it occurs in the aristocracy. It expands on the idea that only an education and inheritance will bring success in society, with few exceptions. Lastly, Dickens expands his opinions of society through his mockery of ...