the posthumous papers of the pickwick club

It is by means of this voice that the reader participates in the ebullience of the novel. We realize the youthfulness of the narrative voice, but we are also astonished frequently at its artistic maturity. Most important, it is playful, open to experiment. The prose itself is ironic, colloquial, supple, fresh, and adaptable to many moods and situations. The portrait of Dickens that this novel conveys is one of a witty, shrewd, observant, flexible, inventive, humane young man. He also has the intense imagination needed to make his invented characters come alive. It is not enough to say that Dickens has a quick, brilliant eye and a reportorial ear. Although Dickens uses the past tense, we imagine the action happening in the present. We can visualize the scenes taking place before our eyes. Even in making fun of theatrical pretenses he enjoys their exuberance.ĭickens' sense of theater gives the action of Pickwick Papers a sense of immediacy. His delight in play-acting is evident everywhere.

Dickens is a protean author, able to project himself through hundreds of distinct, lively roles. The characters talk themselves alive, so to speak.

He prefers to show off his characters as if they were on stage, to present them dramatically through their appearance, their gestures and, above all, their speech. While he can enter the minds of his characters and read their thoughts, this mode is not really congenial to him. And what emerges is an omniscient third-person narrator. However, before we are very far along, the machinery of the club and the note-taking by the Pickwickians are forgotten. The narrator, 'Boz,' is purportedly reworking the club papers into a coherent, unified story. Yet from the first the narrative takes a different form. From the full title of the novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, one might expect a collection of notes, letters, diaries, and minutes.

The posthumous papers of the pickwick club