HTRLLAP

The author of this passage describes Scrooge as a person so evil that the character is almost unbelievable.

Dear Old Scrooge

When People read the Christmas Carol they seem to think Scrooge is “One of a Kind” (Foster 109). Did it ever occur to you that there are actually people out there who are exactly like Scrooge? So Scrooge Symbolizes some different people. Like Scrooge learned his lesson, those people show change for themselves and for their society.

According to the author, political writing “can be one- dimensional, simplistic, reductionist, preachy, dull” (Foster 110). The author seems to dislike the political writing called programmatic. An example of this would be a character or characters that are “‘clumsy and heavy-handed” (Foster 110).

In The Author’s opinion

The author enjoys political writing that addresses rights of people and what people do wrong while in power. These include: London in Dickens' late novels, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s and Toni Morrison’s novels.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote tales such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Masque of the Red Death.”

Edgar Allen Poe

In one of the tales was told around the time the plague had started. It ended with a prince and his friends, who had isolated themselves from everyone that night, dying that morning. In the other tale, the characters are fortunate to be living after a crisis. The Author describes them, “She has a progressive wasting disease, he is prematurely aging and decrepit, his hair nearly gone and his nerves shot.” (Foster 112).

The story of Rip Van Winkle is a simple story. It is about a man who goes to hunt (trying to get away from his wife) when he falls asleep and slept for twenty years. When he woke up the sign on the hotel was changed, his wife was dead, and everything else around him had changed.

Another Tale

The author asks the reader, “What does is mean that Dame Van Winkle is dead?” and “How does that connect with the change of George on the hotel sign?” (Foster 113).

The author explains how political the authors get in the novels and poems they write. Going back to the tales I mentioned on slide 4, the author says, “Poe offers criticism of the European government class system,” who he thinks is not very established (Foster 112). In the story of “Rip Van Winkle”, the guy slept through the American Revolution. He had woke up not knowing that the nation was free from the British. The hotel sign had a picture of George Washington on it instead of a picture of King George.

to Sum it up

The Question is asked, “So is every literary work political?” (Foster 114). Novels and other writings are based around their time period. The authors wrote these books because they had an interest in the world around them. You know if a book is political because it would refer to racism, justice, rights, a major event, and/or someone of power.

It’s All Political

There was a lot of crime going on in London in the 1800s. The courts had to start focusing on people who committed bigger crimes like fraud then those who might have robbed someone.

There are convicts running all around Pip in the book. The man that Miss Havisham was supposed to marry, Herbert says, “‘got great sums out of her;” (Dickens 180).

London Crimes

Many authors these days write about their own problems, fiction, or events that have gone on in the past. With todays news and media, people can know about the conditions of a place instantly. When people read a book from another place, they don’t realize that there could be more to it then what they already know. I had to research to see what times were like in London at the period at which Great Expectations was written to understand some things.

It’s All Political

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Bantam Dell, 1986. Print.Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print.Clive Emsley, Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker, "London History - A Population History of London", Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 6.0, 28, September 2011 )

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