Re: Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Fri, 1 May 1998 12:00:52 -0100
My dear Miss Elizabeth,
An excellent question! It probes the very essence of fiction. But I must
ask you to try to see that coincidence is essential to fiction. Novels
relate to real life in the way they show us the struggle to maintain the
good over the bad, or the struggle to achieve self knowledge. In real life
these ends are almost always attained - when they are - through a series of
unrelated episodes. We strive and fail to maintain the good in one set of
circumstances. Learning from our failure, we strive again in another, and
perhaps succeed. We fail to perceive ourselves as we are, in one set of
circumstances, with one set of people. Learning again from failure, we
perhaps do perceive ourselves as we are, in quite another set of
circumstances, with quite another set of people. Novels make us see these
processes more clearly through a process of intensification. Just one set
of people are involved, just one great central circumstance. There is a
circularity which makes the errors and their resolutions more striking.
That is why you will find coincidence in all of my novels.
Faithfully yours,
Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________
>Hello! I am studying A Tale of Two Cities in my English class. I was
wondering why you made almost all of the events in the book coincadental?
>
--Elizabeth
>
>
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Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author