Univ of South Carolina Press

Running Head: “DICKENS” BY PETER ACKROYD
“Dickens” by Peter Ackroyd
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1“DICKENS” BY PETER ACKROYD
Nonfiction Analysis Student Activity Sheet
Speaker: The speaker is the author/biographer Peter Ackroyd who wrote the book as a start of a
new form of writing mixing biography with fiction.
He is trustworthy as he considers himself to be more of an archaeologist who had to dug
deep not only within the history of his life but his works and characters as well who were his
creation and in a way retelling of the stories which he saw while walking down the streets of
London as Ackroyd was himself obsessed with the city as Dickens was.
Occasion: The work was published in the 50th anniversary of the Dickens’s death around which
time was already a number of biographical works on Dickens which has already been published.
Ackroyd has successfully provided the scene of the London which according to Dickens was the
city of his dream and was an immortal one.
Audience: The audience of the play were the biographers who has been dealing with the life and
works of Dickens as a historical piece where their work construe of the chain of events which
happened in his life. He wanted the people to understand the perspective of Dickens on how he
picked his characters from the shabbiness and the criminally impinged London and constructed it
into something which he mixed it with his imagination and the depth of his memory to emerge as
something impossible to completely understand.
Purpose: The purpose of the selected text was to study the life of Dickens as a thick fibre which
has not yet been understood by the people. The literary genius who has dealt with failure in his
personal life till the very end and approaching death with the clear knowledge of the fact that he
failed.

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Subject: The subject of the work is the life of Charles Dickens and his works but the blending of
the biographical with the fiction shows the way Ackroyd see him communicating with his own
characters. The way he saw and described the city of London, which throughout his life has been
one of the dearest activity of his life until he reached the point in his life when he could no longer
do that due to his health.
Tone: The author Peter Ackroyd attempt at the biography is very different as he compares the
life of Dickens to that of a sea, the measurement of the depth is almost impossible owing to the
feature of storms and the changing current. Critics have pointed to various gaps in the
biographical facts present in the work which Ackroyd acknowledges is intentional to
communicate the fact that biographies can transfer knowledge which are not true because an
author as great as Dickens and his character is an unfathomable structure.
Evaluating the Author’s Message Student Activity Sheet
Response to Question 1
The key idea of the book was to explore the writings of Charles Dickens and draw
parallel to the characters. The primary idea was to propose that biography of Dickens which has
already been published are simply a reiteration of the factual event which took part but what the
world has been completely deprived of is the enigma of the working and thoughts of Dickens
mind due to his secretive and enclosed nature. They have been lost with the death of the author
and the only thing left with us is his characters from which we can extract the thought process.

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Response to Question 2
Reason Examples Description Persuasive language
The difference in
understanding the
different characters of
Dickens arises from our
lack of information
about most of the
characters present in the
work.
In his work, “The
Mystery of Edwin
Drood” the appearance
of the old lady blowing
smoke from an old
penny ink-bottle could
be the old lady Dickens
has encountered when
he visited an opium den
in Bluegate Fields.
The use of the old lady
points to the way
Dickens picks his
character from amongst
the society and is yet
the description is vast
that it makes one
question the origin and
genuine nature of the
characters.
Ackroyd has tried to
continue his biography
with the same old tone
to give the sense of
belonging to the readers
which could have been
lost with the usage of
the post structuralist
mode of discourses.
Response to Question 3

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Peter Ackroyd as a novelist has also shown the same affinity towards the city of London
and the small towns which has a picturesque view and is yet found to be in a desolated state and
isolation which is one of the main characteristics of Dickens’s writings. He has incorporated the
fictional Dickens in the work who is seen to be communicating with his characters which reveals
a number of probable thought process which is missing from the interpretations.
Response to Question 4
Though his work has been criticized by a number of critics but the logic behind the idea
stands to reason that someone as successful as Dickens and yet his whole has been a complete
struggle and his struggle with opium till the very end does the alter the very ground on which we
see his characters making us question the boundary of the creation and imagination and origin of
the characters.
Response to Question 5
As far as my reading of Dickens goes, it has been a struggle for the readers to understand
the complete depth of his characters. So, “Dickens” by Peter Ackroyd has indeed provided a new
perspective with which can analyze our views of the works we have studied based on the
author’s life.

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References
Lewis, B., & Lewis, B. (2007). My words echo thus: Possessing the past in Peter Ackroyd. Univ
of South Carolina Press.