Teach the Children: The King of Kings
The animated feature film The King of Kings—opening April 11, on the eve of Holy Week—is loosely based on a virtually unknown Dickens work: “The Life of Our Lord, written for my beloved children.”
A New Heart for a New Year, Always!
As Time cries, “Advance!”, we look back on a year that might fill the mouth of Time with lamentation. The Syrian civil war, the Christchurch mosque massacre, economic collapse in Venezuela, Hong Kong protests, the El Paso Walmart shooting, the Sri Lanka Easter terror attack, the Notre-Dame fire, and political upheaval in America. What is … Read more
Christmas in a Cage
I had heard that this store went “all out” at Christmas, but I was still taken aback. Ten-foot-tall nutcrackers, sprawling miniature villages, plush snow unicorns, plastic pine trees encrusted with glitter and glass, jingle bell muzak at high volume, seasonally garish sweaters, gigantic drummer boys para-pum-pum-pumming, a marshmallow army of leering lawn inflatables, and a … Read more
Doing Justice to Good and Evil: Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
There are not many things more enjoyable than opening up a book and finding a character named Simon Tappertit. One will only encounter this joy, however, if the book he picks up is Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens. He will find there, indeed, not only joy, but sorrow. He will find gallantry, loyalty, simple goodness, … Read more
Dickens’ David Copperfield: The Wealth of Goodness in Human Nature
In Dickens’ novels the problems of suffering in the form of poverty, tragedy, and injustice receive their greatest relief from simple, humble, lowly characters with kind, compassionate, and charitable hearts—not from wealthy benefactors, social agencies, or doles from government welfare. Portraying the hardheartedness of the powerful, the avaricious, and the callous in the cold and … Read more
A Tale of Two Cities: Read It Again for the First Time
It is the best of tales, it is the worst of tales, it is for the age of foolishness, it is for the age of wisdom, it is an epic of belief, it is an epic of incredulity, it shines with Light, it shadows with Darkness, it springs with hope, it winters with despair, it … Read more
The Unsolved Mystery of Mr. Dickens
June 9, 1870. Charles Dickens sat writing at his desk. He had been laboring more than was his custom on his latest book. Though the story was progressing well, Mr. Dickens was not feeling well. His left hand clawed at the air. His left foot dragged on the ground. And though he had recently retired … Read more
Catholic Thoughts on A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens’s 1843 Christmas Carol was the beginning of a series of annual “Christmas books” that were very popular gifts in the Victorian era. But while many today treat A Christmas Carol as a child’s holiday story, it is anything but … and it makes many Catholic points. Some might disagree. Jesus is only obliquely mentioned … Read more
Charles Dickens’ Hard Times: The Usefulness of Useless Things
“The Child is father of the Man,” wrote William Wordsworth, marveling at the enchantment of the child’s early experience and delight in play. The formative period of childhood cultivates in the young a love of life, a sense of adventure, and an imaginative world filled with wonder. As the child in Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden … Read more
The Man Who Saved Christmas
In The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, author Les Standiford points out that in the publication year of A Christmas Carol, 1843—written when Dickens was only 31—“there were no Christmas cards, no Christmas trees at royal residences or White Houses, no Christmas … Read more
Gravediggers, Goblins, and How Dickens Discovered Christmas
Christmas has become a humbug. Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge was a sour soothsayer for our times. By and large, Christmas is a humbug these days. It preaches peace, but breeds pressure. The ritual of the mall stands in for the ritual of the Mass. Santa Claus is not really Saint Nicholas. The holidays are not really … Read more
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
“Now what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” With this dogmatic and militaristic monologue … Read more
The Chimes by Charles Dickens
A hard year. But listen! Pick yourselves up. The voice of Time cries to man, Advance! A hard year still! A year to fill the mouth of Time with lamentation. Dare we turn back? The Boston bombers. The Cleveland kidnapper. The Jodi Arias Murder Trial. The demise of DOMA. The NSA scandal. Syrian civil war. … Read more
Dickens’ Forgotten Christmas Tale: The Haunted Man
Everyone knows Charles Dickens’ classic holiday story A Christmas Carol. It is, arguably, one of the Victorian author’s most permanent masterpieces, adorning Christmas celebrations in every corner of the English-speaking world, and making the likes of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Cratchit family household names. Modern audiences have seen it adapted for television and film in … Read more
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
It is a true truism that art imitates life. We might be struck anew by the freshness underlying this proverb if we consider the type of all imitation, the mimicry of a child. Children immediately fix on an animal’s salient characteristics then exaggerate them. Despite their best intentions, and the windows being up, adults will … Read more
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Ignorance and Want: “…no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade… has monsters half so horrible and dread.” Leave it to Mr. Dickens to capture the demons of fallen nature and fallen society without taming them. This is a single instance in a multitude why A Christmas Carol is no Hallmark affair to be … Read more
