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Martin Chuzzlewit
Martin Chuzzlewit
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Chuzzlewit, Chapters 21 - 23
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"Poor Martin! forever building castles in the air. Forever in his own selfishness, forgetful of all but his own teeming hopes and sanguine plans."
What a difference a century makes! The irony and perfect choice of the place name shows Dickens at his best. Martin and Mark want to buy a piece of Eden. Ah, the snakes in the bush. When Dickens wrote how Mr. Scudder "blew the dust off the roof of the Theatre" when he showed M&M the plans it sums up their innocence perfectly.
The National Hotel is certainly not The Dragon back in England. The lads should pack up and head on home asap.

I do like your sentence "Martin and Mark want to buy a piece of Eden" ;-) In fact they should have taken a look at Eden first, and one can only wonder at the degree of naivety that induces Martin to acquire land he has never seen.
It is so clear that Mr. Scadder is a crook if ever crook there was. Just remember this brilliant description of the respectable Scadder:
"He was a gaunt man in a huge straw hat, and a coat of green stuff. The weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar wide open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap to his lips. If so, it never reached them.
Two grey eyes lurked deep within this agent's head, but one of them had no sight in it, and stood stock still. With that side of his face he seemed to listen to what the other side was doing. Thus each profile had a distinct expression; and when the movable side was most in action, the rigid one was in its coldest state of watchfulness. It was like turning the man inside out, to pass to that view of his features in his liveliest mood, and see how calculating and intent they were."
Not only has he swallowed Truth and would not let her pass his lips again, but he is literally described as a two-faced man. ;-)

I'm sorry, but America isn't sound very hospitable at the moment. It reminds me of the readings about the early days of colonised Australia, particularly the 'bush'. Urgh. I am glad I live in this day and age.
I wonder how this description of America lived up to what the broadsheets (newspapers) said life was like there. I know it was quite different in Australia in comparison to what they were trying to sell it as to the British public.

Now, firmly planted in a fetid Eden, it appears that MC jr is about to become ill like so many have before him in this place. Many of those never were cured, but rather died. With Mark by his side, what will happen to our hero ...
Well, sorry about the above ramble, but when Joseph Campbell's Monomyth theory or Jung drift across my brain, I'm still responding to their siren's call.

We're thinking on the same lines Peter. The harsh barrenness leaves me contemplating a rebirth of some kind. I'm interested to see how Dickens writes it even though I'm finding it increasingly depressing.

Kate
I sometimes wonder if I'm just imagining connections to Jung, Campbell, Frye, Levi-Strauss and the lot. While not all styles of interpretation work well, or even at all, in all circumstances, they do all help and inform my reading and understanding along the way.
Let's track young Mr. MC and see what's up in the rest of the novel.

"The scenery, before you reach the mountains, and when you are on them, and after you have left them, is very grand and fine; and the canal winds its way through some deep, sullen gorges, which, seen by moonlight, are very impressive: though immeasurably inferior to Glencoe, to whose terrors I have not seen the smallest approach. We have passed, both in the mountains and elsewhere, a great number of new settlements and detached log houses. Their utterly forlorn and miserable appearance baffles all description. I have not seen six cabins out of six hundred, where the windows have been whole. Old hats, old clothes, old boards, old fragments of blanket and paper, are stuffed into the broken glass; and their air is misery and desolation. It pains the eye to see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat; and never to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks, of elm and pine and sycamore and logwood, steeped in its unwholesome water; where the frogs so croak at night that after dark there is an incessant sound as if millions of phantom teams, with bells, were traveling through the upper air, at an enormous distance off. It is quite an oppressive circumstance, too, to come upon great tracks, where settlers have been burning down the trees; and where their wounded bodies lie about, like those of murdered creatures; while here and there some charred and blackened giant rears two bare arms aloft, and seems to curse his enemies. The prettiest sight I have seen was yesterday, when we—on the heights of the mountain, and in a keen wind—looked down into a valley full of light and softness; catching glimpses of scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark; pigs scampering home, like so many prodigal sons; families sitting out in their gardens; cows gazing upward, with a stupid indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves, looking on at their unfinished houses, and planning work for to-morrow;—and the train riding on, high above them, like a storm. But I know this is beautiful—very—very beautiful!

But in another way, it's just what he needs to test the limits, of any, of his cheerfulness.
Chapters 21 to 23 take us further into the American adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit jr. and the indefatigable Mark Tapley. We meet some more two-dimensional and extremely flat characters and see some major change in Martin.
One of the tiny details I found quite amusing - probably in the light of our recent off-topic exploits in bird walking - was the engine-driver of the train mentioned in Chapter 21, who was smoking and sometimes gave "a grunt as short as his pipe". ;-)
What about your observations?