Tag Archives: David Copperfield

I Have Found My Sheep that Was Lost

By Robin Bates | Published: September 15, 2013

Dickens draws on the parable of the lost sheep in shaping “David Copperfield.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bible, Charles Dickens, lost sheep | Comments closed

Poetry vs. Death’s Madness

By Robin Bates | Published: August 26, 2013

In the face of death, poetry stands as a bulwark against dissolution, chaos, and madness.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "How could I have come so far?", "Life Monitor", Cat's Cradle, Charles Dickens, Checkmate, Ciaran O'Driscoll, death and dying, Dorothy Dunnett, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom McGrath | Comments closed

Waiting for the Tide to Turn

By Robin Bates | Published: August 23, 2013

Dickinson, Coleridge and Dickens come to mind as we await the moment of my father’s death.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "After great pain a formal feeling comes", Charles Dickens, death and dying, Emily Dickinson, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Comments closed

Parental Rule #1: Respect Your Child

By Robin Bates | Published: August 14, 2013

“David Copperfield” enjoins us to respect the interiority of children.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged character formation, Charles Dickens, child development, Children, Education | Comments closed

Novels for When We Need Them the Most

By Robin Bates | Published: August 12, 2013

I read “David Copperfield” before entering high school. I didn’t know that it would anticipate some of my unhappy experiences there.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged adolescence, boarding school, Charles Dickens, harsh discipline | Comments closed

Dickens Puts Lawyers on Trial

By Robin Bates | Published: February 9, 2012

Charles Dickens was especially severe on lawyers, who show up in 11 of his 15 novels.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bleak House, Charles Dickens, lawyers, Pickwick Papers | Comments closed

Becoming the Hero of Our Own Life

By Robin Bates | Published: June 24, 2010

David Copperfield (1935) “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,” writes narrator David Copperfield at the beginning of the great Charles Dickens novel. But why the uncertainty? Can’t we just decide to be the hero of […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, Beowulf, cancer, Catcher in the Rye, Charles Dickens, death and dying, In Memoriam, J. D. Salinger, Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot | Comments closed

Is Father-Son Conflict Inevitable?

By Robin Bates | Published: July 22, 2009

I had an interesting conversation with my two sons yesterday as we drove them and my daughter-in-law to the Portland airport, marking the beginning of the end of our summer vacation. The conversation began with me wondering why there weren’t works of literature that accurately capture the kind of father-son relationship that I feel that […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Defoe, fathers and sons, Great Expectations, Hamlet, Henry IV, Homer, Human Stain, Lawrence Sterne, Nicholas Nickleby, Odyssey, Oedipus, Oliver Twist, Philip Roth, Road, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison, Tristram Shandy | Comments closed