The Alienation Characteristic In Merchant Characters Of Dickens' Works

This article analyzes the merchant characters selected from Charles Dickens' works. Most merchants in his works have a common characteristic, in a word: Successful career doesn't bring happiness. These merchants often have great material wealth and social impacts admired by others, however, their emotional life and fate were invariably failed to bring happiness, mainly caused by their personality alienation. While the ability to change the nature and outside world is continuously increased, the mental and emotional crisis was intensified, producing all kinds of personality alienation, especially in western countries. Therefore, this article uses the theory of alienation of personality from Fromm to analyze the merchants selected from Dickens's novels, hoping to achieve a deep understanding of these characters.This article is composed by three parts, including the introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction presents the current status of researching Dickens, the meaning of the topic, the introduction and review of alienation theory. The body includes three chapters. Merchants which demonstrate the characteristics of alienation from the abused type, the self-sacrifice type, the abusive type and the destructive type were analyzed in the first chapter. Since the personality of abused type and the self-sacrifice type are often mixed, the descriptions to these two type are combined; Through the analysis of individual alienation in the second chapter, the author finds that the lack of creativity in love and the ability to work is the key factor for alienating the individual personality; In the third chapter, the author analyzes the causes of alienation from social impacts, concluding that the suppressing to the uniqueness of individual nature and the cultivation of false ideal are the major social factors contributing to the individual alienation. At the last part, this article analyzes and describes the awakening thought and the ideal of serving society conveyed through the alienation features in Dickens's merchant characters.