Charles Dickens 5

Dickens had the ability to touch the heart of just about any and everyone who ever read him. He skillfully and caringly wrote about the abuses and misuses of human beings in a world that wasn’t always pleasing - a place of greed, child abuse, and opportunism – with enough honesty to address the ugly and enough hope to give you an opportunity to see the light at the end of the tunnel. His well-developed characterizations ran the gamut of humanity and were at once flawed, imperfect, rebellious, sheltered, sometimes insane, occasionally saintly, amazingly evil, but above all memorable. His work remains classic more than a century and a half after he penned it not simply because it is easy to adapt to the screen (which I totally agree that it was) but because regardless of the story or situation Dickens was above all gifted in the ability to touch a place deep in our collective soul. His legacy to the world of literature was an unmatched collection of genuine, honest and hopeful stories that provide the reader with a look back at his time as well as a chance to look within themselves. Though we have gone from farming and industry to a technologically driven existence it is still very easy to see that the hopes, dreams, problems and challenges of the people Dickens imagined are not that much different than our own. We still long for acceptance and love, sometimes embrace cynicism, children are still misused and abused, and oddballs, criminals, and predators have certainly not gone away. These still very relevant works have and will hold up for centuries to come providing not only great movie material but also wonderful reading for future generations. The work of Charles Dickens is everything good literary fiction should be and truly an enduring joy.