THE SEQUEL OF
MY RESOLUTION
(CHAPTER 13)
CHARLES DICKENS
1. In which year was Charles Dickens
born?
2. What was Dickens's pen name for his
early pieces?
3. Where was Charles Dickens born?
4. How old was Charles Dickens when he
died?
5. Name some of Charles Dickens’ works.
CHARLES DICKENS
In which year was Charles Dickens born?
1812
CHARLES DICKENS
What was Dickens's pen name for his early
pieces?
Boz
CHARLES DICKENS
• Where was Charles Dickens born?
Portsmouth
CHARLES DICKENS
How old was Charles Dickens when he
died?
58 years old
CHARLES DICKENS
• Dickens (1812-1870)
• The greatest critical realist
• Born to a impoverished family → child
labor → favorite theme
WHY IS CHARLES DICKENS SO
POPULAR?
Enduring characters
Mixing humor with serious questions about
social justice
-> a light touch with heavy issues: cruelty
to children, the mistreatment of women,
and urban poverty and debt
INTRODUCTION
• Charles Dickens' eighth novel
• Monthly magazine installments from May 1849 to November
1850
INTRODUCTION
• (Autobiographical) novel - 1849
• Written in the third period of Dickens’ career
o Strongest social criticism
o Criticizing “the soulless and unwholesome nature of
competition in an industrial life”
o Losing all his hope in social regeneration
INTRODUCTION
• Narrator: An older David Copperfield
• Point Of View: In the first person
• Settings: 1800s, England
• Major Conflict: David struggles to become a man in a cruel
world, with few people to guide him.
• Rising Action: David loses his mother and falls victim to a cruel
childhood but then has a happier youth with Miss Betsey and
her acquaintances
DAVID COPPERFIELD – SUMMARY
• David lived happily with his mother without his birth father.
• His stepfather treated David cruelly and sent him to school.
• After his mother’s death, David worked in a London factory.
Because of the factory’s financial instability , David decided to
search for his father’s aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood - his only living
relative. He walked a long distance to Miss Betsey’s home [The
sequel of my resolution], and she took him in on the advice of a
friend.
THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION – SUMMARY
• David sold some of the clothes in order to buy food. The shopkeepers who bought
the clothes took advantage of him, and travelers abused him on the road.
• David arrived at the home of his aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood, who initially tried to
send him away.
• When he told her that he was her nephew, she consulted with Mr. Dick, the man
who lived upstairs in her home. Mr. Dick suggested that before she did anything,
she gave David a bath. Miss Betsey repeatedly compared David to the sister he
never had and concluded that his sister would not have done the stupid things
David had done.
• Miss Betsey was a tough, sharp woman obsessed with keeping donkeys off the
grass in front of her house. She bathed and fed David and spoke to Mr. Dick at
length about David’s mother, whom she pitied very much. David was nervous
about whether his aunt would keep him or send him away.
DISCUSSION 1
1. What did David decide to do?
2. In what condition did he find himself when he started the
journey?
3. What did D do to raise his money?
4. How did D make the bargain with Mr. Dolloby?
5. What feelings and thoughts did he have as he slept outside his
old school?
6. What did D do at Chatham? Where did he want to sell his jacket?
7. How did he sell his jacket?
DISCUSSION 1
8. Who did D meet on the way? What did the tinker do to David?
9. Why did he feel miserable when he reached Dover?
10.How did he find the way to his aunt’s house?
11.Why was he ashamed to introduce himself?
12.How was his aunt described?
13.What did the hand-maid, and then Miss Trotwood think of D at
first?
14.How was the aunt when she heard D’s words?
DISCUSSION 2
1. What are your first impressions when you read the extract?
2. What is the advantage of using the first person’s point of view?
3. What are the achievements of Dickens in this passage: the power
of description, the analysis of human mind, the using of language?
4. What do you think about Dickens’ style?
5. Dickens described the shop-keepers twice. What is his main
method in describing the 1 st one and the 2 nd one?
6. Why are the shop-keepers so vivid? Why are they so living and
credible?
DISCUSSION 2
7. “Mr. Dolloby…It was not much”. Why did Dickens use many short, simple
sentences in this part? What effects do they have upon the readers’
imagination?
8. Find evidence to prove that D is courageous, determined, strong -willed
but sentimental?
9. Find examples for his determination, endurance and ability to meet
difficult situations?
10. What is Dickens’ attitude towards David?
11. What did Dickens want to say to us through this story besides the life of
David?
12. What are your general impressions about the book? What did Dickens
want to show us in this novel?
DISCUSSION 3
1. Explain the proverb: “Where there’s will, there’s a way”
2. Is Dickens unjust in describing shop-keepers? What can you say
about the shop-keepers, the small traders from your own
experience?
3. Why so you say “ Bringing up and educating children is the
duty of not only parents but of the whole society.”?
4. HW (300w) Write to prove that Dickens is a writer with profound
humanism.
An adventure story – the wandering journey of a hero:
• Thrilling, unconnected incidents
• The hero persevered and reached his goal
→ How is this reflected in the chapter?
THE FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW
“At the end of 1848, Dickens “very gravely” embraced the
suggestion “thrown out” by Forster that he should write his next
novel “in the first person.” Despite struggling initially, he soon
wrote with the confidence (and trepidation) of someone who was
revisiting his own past. “The story,” remarked Forster, “bore him
irresistibly along”.”
THE FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW
A storyteller and a witness
-> a reliable fictional double of the author
Interpretive faculties (makes sense of the world by rationalising our
experience within the context of a personal and cultural narrative )
Moral qualities
THE POWER OF DESCRIPTION
Detailed and vivid, melodramatic and emotional, but realistic
Strong similes & exaggerations:
• The surroundings
• David’s mental & physical state
• The people David encountered
Examples?
The shopkeepers
THE POWER OF DESCRIPTION
Detailed and vivid, melodramatic and emotional, but realistic
Dense description
Humorous commentaries
Examples?
• This was a disagreeable way…
• The second shopkeeper’s bizarre manner
• Aunt Betsey’s perplexed but concerned reaction
SYMBOLS
“a piece of water, and a great foolish image in the middle,
blowing a shell”
SYMBOLS
Symbolism: An artistic and poetic movement or style using
symbolic images and indirect suggestion to express mystical
ideas, emotions, and states of mind
- from lexico.com
SYMBOLS
• A great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from
the low ceiling
• Two feeble candles
SYMBOLS
“Neat little cottage” and the “carefully tended” garden
“full of flowers”?
flowers stand as images of rebirth and health—a significance
that points to a springlike quality in characters associated with
their blossoms. Flowers indicate fresh perspective and thought
and often recall moments of frivolity and release.
THEMES
The Plight of the Weak
• The powerful abuse the weak and helpless.
• Exploitation - not pity or compassion - is the rule in an industrial society.
• The inhumanity of child labor, morally good characters suffer punishment at the
hands of forces larger than themselves.
• The weak in David Copperfield never escape the domination of the powerful by
challenging the powerful directly. Instead, the weak must ally themselves with
equally powerful characters.
• E.g. David doesn’t stand up to and challenge his authority. Instead, he flees to the
wealthy Miss Betsey, whose financial stability affords her the power to shelter David.
David’s escape proves neither self-reliance nor his own inner virtue, but rather the
significance of family ties and family money in human relationships.
THEMES
Home and Family
• The ideal Victorian home was one that served as a refuge from the outside world,
with the wife/mother providing an atmosphere of calm.
