远大前程英文读后感.docVIP

CHARLES DICKENS: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES Dickens is one of the worlds best-loved writers, and Great Expectations may be Dickens most autobiographical work. The narrator of Great Expectations, Pip, is, in contrast, a man of many faults, who hides none of them from the reader. If Pip is a self-portrait, Dickens must have been a reservoir (2.储藏, 汇集)of inferiority complexes, guilt, and shame. Many other aspects of Great Expectations are autobiographical, too. The beginning of the novel is set shortly after Dickens birthdate (1812) in the country of his childhood--the Kentish countryside by the sea (the nearest large town is Rochester, where Miss Havisham lives). Dickens wasnt an orphan, as Pip is, but he may well have felt like one. His parents, John and Elizabeth Dickens, were sociable, pleasant people, but Mrs. Dickens was a careless housekeeper and Mr. Dickens, a minor civil servant always spent more money than he made. When Charles, who was the eldest boy, was nine, the Dickenses pulled up roots and moved to London to try to live more cheaply. Charles was appalled by the cramped, grubby house they lived in there, and even more ashamed when his father was arrested and taken to debtors prison. The rest of the Dickenses were allowed to move into prison with their father, but twelve-year-old Charles had to live on his own outside. His mother arranged for him to get a job in a filthy, rat-infested warehouse, pasting labels on bottles of boot blacking (a kind of shoe polish). This time of his life was so miserable that he never told anyone, not even his own wife or children, about it. He was called the young gentleman by the other boys at the factory, who resented his air of being better than they were. But he did feel that hed come down in life, and he developed a bitter sense of ambition and self-reliance: he vowed never to let himself be poor or in debt again. This situation lasted only a few months; then John Dickens received an inheritance from a rich aunt (a windf