Happy 200th Mr Dickens. I am presently reading Claire Tomalin’s ‘Charles Dickens: A Life’ and enjoying getting to know the creator of so many illustrious characters. What strikes me most was his social conscious and the way he was concerned to draw attention to the gulf between rich and poor. A gulf Tomalin, writing in The Guardian today, says he would still see. John Bird in The Big Issue says that in some way every Big Issue vendor will be a reminder that the poverty that was rampant in the age of Dickens is not gone from us.
But Dickens as hero? This comes from a passage in the 2009 Intermediate 2 English exam paper. It is titled ‘Why Dickens was the hero of Soweto’, adapted from an article by Carol Lee. She tells the story of the Soweto uprising against oppression and in particular the South African government’s edict to make Afrikaans compulsory.Pupils thought that being taught in Afrikaans, the language of the regime that had tried to “unpeople” them, would cost them their remaining freedom. Many books were banned but not the classics of English literature.Pupils arriving hungry at school every day were captivated by the story of a frail and courageous boy named Oliver Twist, a boy who asked for more. Reading Dickens they felt that they were not alone and taking heart they became determined not to be forgotten. Students at one of the leading black colleges formed a committee to ask for more. They asked for more food, more lessons and more books.
