Style Questions:
1. How does Dickens use diction, tone and figurative language to differentiate between characters’ classes, ages, and nationalities? How does this differentiation connect to Marxist ideas?
2. Dickens uses many “mechanical” metaphors to describe Mr. Lorry, who exhibits an overpowering air of detachment. Is he, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, dead? Lorry is described as having “a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. With a Marxist lens, analyze Dickens’ use of metaphor to describe measurable, mechanical things, like the commodity of time, and their role in Lorry’s character as well as in the novel as a whole.
Open Analysis Questions:
1. The narrator comments, “In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?” Is a capitalist, or commodity-driven, society inherently singular and isolated? What are the implications of this isolation in respect to the ability of a society to survive? How do Dickens’ characters demonstrate your assertions? Bring in evidence from any part of the book.
2. In “The Preparation,” Miss Mannette and the man from Tellson share compassion and touching moments juxtaposed with business. What is revealed by this easy mingling of disparate interactions? Connect to Marxism. How is this reflected as the story progresses?
3. Is it possible for a capitalist society to not have commodity fetishism? Is it only brought on by a universal equivalent for exchange? Is it necessary to have commodity fetishism for an economy to thrive? Answer through ATOTC.
4. Dickens exposes the darker side of human nature as men fight and compete with each other for their own personal gain. Are greed and malice largely products of a profoundly capitalistic society? Do you agree with the Marxist assertion, that in such a system men are primarily related to each other only “in the social process of production”? The owner of the wine shop disregards the spilling of the wine barrel because “It’s not my affair. The people from the market did it. Let them bring another” (32). In light of this and other examples through Book Two, Chapter 6, does competition create a cycle of turning the oppressed into the oppressors? Why or why not. Bring in evidence from anywhere in the book.