I finished my latest reading of David Copperfield today (I think this is my third reading), and once again experienced the power and elegance of Dickens' writing. In a quiet but forceful manner, he pulls the reader into the world of the story. It's almost a cliche, but for a few moments while I was reading today, I was 'lost' in this touching story. I wasn't 'Mr. Salsich the English teacher', but simply a silent witness to the trials and triumphs of Dickens' remarkable collection of characters. I am one lucky reader!

The quote printed below is from Chapter 55, a powerful description of a storm along the coast near Yarmouth -- a storm which took the lives of two of David's great friends, Ham Peggotty and James Steerforth. In the passage below, David has just seen the body of Ham, dragged in to shore after a failed attempt to rescue Steerforth, and now someone has come to tell him of another body.

.........................................

As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was 

done, a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were
children, and ever since, whispered my name at the door.

'Sir,' said he, with tears starting to his weatherbeaten face,
which, with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, 'will you come over
yonder?'

The old remembrance that had been recalled to me was in his
look. I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out
to support me--

'Has a body come ashore?'

He said, 'Yes.'

'Do I know it?' I asked then.

He answered nothing.

But, he led me to the shore. And on that part of it where she
and I had looked for shells, two children--on that part of it where
some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had
been scattered by the wind--among the ruins of the home he had
wronged--I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had
often seen him lie at school.

In Chapter 32, Mr. Peggotty embarks on a "long journey" (the title of the chapter) in search of his beloved niece Emily, after he and David had an emotional meeting with Steerforth's mother and the strange and wicked Rosa Dartle. 

Ah, more sorrow over the death of Peggotty's husband, but especially over the fact that Emily, the beloved niece and friend, ran off with a good friend of David's. Ham Peggotty (yes, that's his first name) and Mr. Peggotty, Emily's adopted uncle, are preparing to abandon their homes and jobs to search for her, which is causing David much grief and worry. However, the most interesting development in this part of the book is the complete change -- transformation, re-birth, you might say -- of Mrs. Gummidge. She had always been a self-pitying, pessimistic, helpless person, but somehow the two tragedies have awakened her into a new person. She is suddenly helpful, loving, and optimistic. It's a profound event in the story, one that I'll have to give serious thought to in the next few days. (Also, the dwarf, Miss Mowcher, has some powerful things to say about society's cruel treatments of dwarfs and other handicapped people.)

Chapters 30 and 31 brought a mood of great sadness to the story, and I was often close to tears as I turned the pages. First David and his circle of friends lost the inimitable Barkis,  the husband of Peggotty, David's nurse in his younger years. His death couldn't have been described more gently and artistically: the sentences seemed to move with doleful serenity, making death seem at the same time more real and more harmonious than I'd ever before imagined it. Then, as if echoing Shakespeare's words that 'sorrows come not singly, but in battalions', in the next chapter little Em'ly, Peggotty's beloved neice, runs off in the night with Steerforth, whom David had considered his best and most cherished friend. It's an overwhelming blow to David and the Peggottys -- a time of intense sadness for them (and for this reader). 

So far I'm up to Chapter 26 in my re-reading of Dickens' David Copperfield. (I read it many years ago, but thankfully I've forgotten most of it, so I'm discovering the wonderful story all over again.) One interesting thing I'm noticing is how 'ordinary', and perhaps even anti-heroic, the protagonist -- David -- is. He's just a typically confused, hesitant,  struggling boy -- young man now -- who's trying to find the right roads to walk in life. There's nothing extraordinary about him, which is perhaps what makes him such an engaging character. He definitely meets many extraordinary people, but maybe it's precisely his ordinariness that makes the others seem so outlandish. Because he's so ordinary, characters like Mr. Dick and Rosa Dartle seem exceptionally odd beside him.