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Charles DickensA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Jane Tompkins, who writes frequently about the literature of sensibility and sentimentality, once answered the question “What is literature for?” by asserting that literature’s purpose is to change things. In your view, what is The Old Curiosity Shop for? What things does it hope to change, and how does the narrative illustrate the necessity for those changes? Avoid mere plot summary.
The first-person narrator of the novel’s first three chapters gives up his position of authority in the story so that the characters can “speak and act for themselves” (36). The narration that follows comes from a detached, third-person narrator who has access to everyone’s thoughts and feelings. What purpose does the narratorial shift serve?
One critique of sentimentalism is that it may fail to interrogate the systemic causes of the misfortunes it portrays, and that there is occasionally an ethical issue of people feeling sympathy but not taking action to help (e.g., “I feel bad, and that’s enough”). Choose two characters from the novel and examine how one exemplifies the best of sentimentalism and how the other embodies the failings mentioned above. Do not rely on plot summary.
By Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty
Charles Dickens
Bleak House
Charles Dickens
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
Dombey and Son
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Hard Times
Charles Dickens
Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens
Pickwick Papers
Charles Dickens
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Charles Dickens
The Signal-Man
Charles Dickens