Saturday, May 31, 2014
The generic bad adult - Mr. Bumble
Mr. Bumble reminds me of the generic evil adult who makes children suffer in order to gain something for his own selfish benefit. This kind of character appears actually quite often in stories, especially those directed towards children such as the evil stepmother in Cinderella, the evil aunts in James and the Giant Peach, and White Witch from Narnia. These books gave children readers the idea of evil adults who try to make children's lives miserable. Many children then begin to compare adults in their own lives to those evil ones in these stories. Even myself once thought my 3rd grade teacher was somehow an evil witch in disguise out to make my life unbearable. However, looking back I can see that I was completely wrong. Many children think many adults as the antagonists of their lives but most of the the times we are just too ignorant and ungrateful to understand that most adults are here to help us and we should appreciate their presence. But there is a possibility that there is indeed an adult out there who is just like Mr. Bumble, perhaps Mr.Bumble was a character who resembled someone in Charles Dickens own life. Maybe there was indeed a greedy over-powered adult who didn't give a care about children and that Mr. Bumble was a way to show readers of these people's existence. Nonetheless, Mr.Bumble is definitely a sinister character who thinks only of himself. Also, a question I had while reading is how does the government and authorities not realize the sudden deaths and malnutrition of the children in the workplace? Do they just don't know about it or do they don't care?
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I feel like the government probably knows that the workhouses aren't good for the kids, but it can't do much about it. After all, it don't have the money to feed and house all these orphans, so it choeses to turn its head on the whole issue. I think this is one of the saddest realities of the book, that even if some people do care about these orphans like Oliver, there isn't a lot that can be done, for him and all the other children like him who live without parents.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Stephanie. Issues like this seemed to be ignored or not seen as a big problem during the time. It's so weird to see the contrast between now and then. If something like that was going on in the United States, and the government knew, it would be shut down very quickly. I don't think there were enough resources at the time to make sure everyone was well fed and children were treated right. It's quite sad.
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