Charles Dickens is a connoisseur of realistic fiction. The Pickwick Papers is his first novel and is a comedy fable. The main characters are Mr. Pickwick and Snodgrass. The Pickwick Papers may be in the pulp fiction genre. The characters engage in frivolous jokes and enjoy trivial things. Although the novel is intended to be funny, it does not make people laugh.
The novel opens with Pickwick forming a club. The club discuss weird and bizarre things like the number of toads in England, the number of women who have reached puberty, the number of mosquitoes in England, etc.
The novel cannot be considered an aesthetic masterpiece. There are few rhetorical figures in the novel. The defect of the novel is that there is no story and no plot. The novel meanders from silly dialogues. Romance is something in the novel that is dealt with in a lighthearted comic vein. Pickwick falls in love with a middle-aged lady and kisses her in public. There is no philosophical content in the novel. Romance is a recurring leitmotiv in the novel.
The novel is pompous and uses bombastic language. The reader becomes a prison of his language. The solitude of the reader is violated. The novel portrays the life of the Spanish bourgeoisie. All the characters in the novel exhibit similar behavior. The author’s psyche is one of pseudo narcissism. Pickwick is a volatile mischief who tries to flirt with various types of women. The novel is a symptom of psychological crisis. There is a very frugal literary depth. The reader is drunk on the nonsense of chaos. The novel is devoid of imagination and remains entirely a gothic fantasy. Pickwick’s comic frenzy is one of darkness. The novel has neither complexity nor diversity. The tone of the novel is ridiculous. One is steeped in the ethos of self-pity. The novel is a sentimental work, a manifestation of nonsense. One cannot praise the novel for even a modicum of merit. The novel portrays the rise of the author’s bildungsroman. The novel lacks coherence and is false. The realism inherent in the novel is pathetically outdated compared to contemporary times. The novel is everyday is lackluster passion literature. The novel is highly egotistical and the author’s strong arm comes into play. The characters do not speak for themselves. The novel lacks literary catharsis.
