"What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people's hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you're playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack." -Keith Richards
Well, for one thing, I really feel like I should look up some of this guy's music.
This oughta do it.
ANYWAY
Right now, I'm ACTUALLY reading Great Expectations, which I lied about reading last semester. Well, I didn't lie, but I didn't read it. So I guess that's lying by omission.
So it goes.
Or doesn't go?
Anyway. Charles Dickens reminds me a bit of Mark Twain, mostly because of that "streaky bacon" dry humor in this book. It's a very loose comparison, but bear with me for a moment here.
Mark Twain's most well known works are Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, respectively. What do these have in common with Great Expectations, you may ask? THESE BOOKS ARE THE NARRATIVE OF A YOUNG BOY ENCOUNTERING PROBLEMS THAT ARE BIGGER THAN THEY ARE.
The child's perspective always offers this view of innocence and naivety because their opinion on the world is still developing. This offers a perfect canvas for a bildungsroman, because the character is literally and figuratively coming of age.
That said, I think Dickens wrote Great Expectations to offer his view on the human condition, both the good and bad, through a child's wide eyed wonderful perspective.
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