David Copperfield :: essays research papers

David Copperfield The novel David Copperfield, written by Charles Dickens, deals with the life and times of David Copperfield. About a century ago in a small town in England, David was born on a Friday at the stroke of midnight, which is considered a sign of bad luck. David's father has already died and his aunt comes to stay with him and his mother as this novel gets off to a very slow start. Soon David becomes aware that his mother has relations with another man and asks one of his servants, "if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry another person, mayn't you?" David is immediately angered that his mother has betrayed his father and goes off to live with his aunt. A while later, David goes back home but quickly gets into trouble and is sent off to school. Dickens uses excellent description in his telling of this story and the reader can easily relate to the characters. The setting of a small town in England is standard in all of his novels, including Great Expectations. The reason for this Dickens' setting is because he was born in the town of Portsmouth, England in 1812. Although as a young child he moved to Chatham where he experienced a pleasant childhood in which many scenes from his childhood are intertwined throughout his novels. Dickens father was constantly in debt and was eventually sent to jail. This memory was agonizing for young Charles as years later he wrote: "No words can express the secret agony of my soul. I felt my early hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in my breast." This directly relates to Dickens discussion of David in a wine house later in the novel. A couple of years later, Dickens attends school at the Wellington House Academy where he fell in love with Maria Beadnell but her father opposed the marriage and nothing became of it. David Copperfield is more of a biography of Dickens life made into fiction than of just a regular story about a boy. Dickens writing skills are apparent as he ties chapters together in an easy to understand novel where the writing seems to move along swiftly. Dickens work is rich with metaphors and enjoyable to analyze as in statements such as, "he eats at one gulp exactly like an elephant." This book is a classic and may be considered his best work. There are times when the novel moves slowly, but the positives outweigh the negatives and David