Dickens's Fictions And The Theme Of Rescuer-Finding

PrefaceThe study of Dickens's childhood topic in his fictions can help us to find out the valid path for understanding some aspects in this great writer's creation. In this article, the writer will discuss a subject of his creations, namely the children in his works who are looking for rescue and protection. We generalize the subject as the theme of rescuer-finding.A, The children who lost their fathersIn his early work Oliver Twist, Dickens established a pattern of person- relation in the orphanhood story, which can be found repeating in every work after that.1, OrphansIf we make a systematic check into the works of Dickens, we can easily find that almost all his heroes or heroines are orphans at different degree, though their age and circumstance are not quite same. When we come to the other characters appear in great abundance in these works, the orphans among them are countless.The mental reason for why Dickens described orphans of various types again and again is that, he had a similar childhood by himself. When he was young he could not get protection from his parents, on the contrary he had to help them constantly. Dickens hoped he could find different ways for the children in his imaginative world out of distress with his pen, so that can do a remedial job for his own irretrievable wounded childhood.2, Distresses made by outside worldThe characteristic which move a reader most in Dickens's orphans, is their innocence, while no one can escape from suffering a lot from the distress imposed by the outside world. Because the orphan figures are numerous, the imposed distress bore by them also expressed at varied ways.There are several types as follow:Socially abuse. For the orphan of Dickens, the world was full of dangerous and disasters. Every irregularity in the society hurts the weak orphans directly and most cruelly. Among them, the most typical bad influence include: the relieving policy, judiciary, the system of school education etc.Sadism without any cause. The children still have to guard against the sadists. In his novel world, there are bad characters like the devils in fairy-tales. They are the kid's enemies and take humiliating a kid as happy event, such as Mr. Creakle who had a delight in cutting at the boys, and Quilp, the pedophile in The Old Curiosity Shop.The burden of parentage. The deepest misery of the children is created by their parentage. This kind of unfortunate embodied both by the sorry predicament those illegitimate children are in, and by the riddles of their parentage.B, Father, fatherBearing these heavy burdens layer after layer, the orphans of Dickens have the hope of getting salvage from fathers.1, Fathers in the realityBut it is sorry to said, similar with Dickens's own father who could not provide a safe and stable life for children. The fathers in his works also have difficulties to do their duty. Those fathers include several types: the father who abandons his own son, the father who has enough to do to look after himself, the father who take himself as the son, and the father who take a wrong position. These fathers usually can't provide a protection for kid and on the contrary impose difficulties on them.2, Call on the creditable fatherThe fathers in the reality can't give the children the protection and make the children feel more desolated. The woe caused by losing father usually makes them send out a sigh in sorrow and a call on father. The word of "father" in Dickens's works has two meanings. The first one is"father", namely the protector in the reality. The person who sent out the sigh in sorrow to this father, mostly are the youth didn't get a nurse of father in their babyhood. The second one is "Father", refer to the religious redeem. Who send out this kind of call are those pure children similar with angels.C, Three styles for rescueSet out from the Theme of rescuer-finding, we want to re-examine those Happy-ends of Dickens's works.1, Fairy-tale: The father's comeback or his substitute The most early works are ended have comedic endings. The father who absent in the past suddenly appeared in front of the orphan, saved him away from distress; Or, the originally incapable fathers restored to be able to salvage the children; Or, although finally there were no father to do salvation, the kids were pitied by destiny, and could finally find a perfect marriage, which can be seemed as a substitute for the father. This is a kind of arrangement of fairy-tale story.2, Tragedy: Redeem by one's ownThere are still some children who didn't receive rescue in time. They then tried to rescue themselves. They can be divided into 2 types: A type of "depressed youth", who have the feeling of vanity result in lacking the aggressive ability to safe themselves, can do only negative and sometimes destructive effort. Another type of youth is those actively struggle for building up their own happiness. But even to this kind of active young man, without foreign salvage, personal effort can do little for the happiness that the orphan long for day and night, either. These 2 kinds of self-rescue actions both infer that Dickens held a pessimism attitude to the way that the orphans save themselves.3, Elegy: The true sense behind the Happy-endsThe Happy-ends in Dickens's later works are covered by a dreamlike color. They are not taken as real. The truth both for Dickens and his orphans is that, they can't expect to receive foreign rescue, and can't expect to obtain faultless happiness through their own effort, either. Dickens's fairy-tales with happy-ends are indeed elegies both for comfort the wounded hearts of his orphans who are forever lonely and sad, and to pay homage to the orphans'hopeless dream of being rescued.ConclusionThere are some critics deny Dickens's works have any mental depth. See from the analysis above, such comment is not just. The theme of rescue-finding in Dickens's works is meaningful and worthy of further study.