Charles Dickens' "The Noble Savage"

Charles Dickens', "The Noble Savage" was the most striking passage from the reading excerpt of Britain, Empire, and a Wider World. This was such a shocking passage to me because it seemed like such a different read than A Walk in the Workhouse. A Walk in the Workhouse seemed to be a praise and a recognition of the working class people of Britain, which I found very noble of Charles Dickens, being that he was an educated man of a higher status. I was so surprised to read The Noble Savage and find that his opinions were so negative of people of different races and cultures. I find it ironic that this essay was published from a magazine titled Household Words, indicating that these were household beliefs during that time.

Dickens states that his intention in writing this essay was not to simply bash the "noble savage," but to command people to not give the savages any praise and to not look at them with nobility or awe. I did not read this passage as Dickens may have hoped his audience would. I believe that Dickens purpose in writing The Noble Savage was to criticize the different cultures that he did not understand or agree with. The tone of this passage is too excited, making me skeptical about the narrator, besides the fact that his views are completely racist. Aside from the flat out racist remarks Dickens makes, he uses sly diction to persuade the reader to accept his beliefs. He discusses how the savages are "cruel, false, thievish, murderous," and "yet it is extraordinary to observe how some people will talk about him, as they talk about the good old times," (page 1020, Broadview Anthology). These rhetorical remarks work as his method of manipulating the audience to take on his views, although I assume most people of the time shared similar views. After reading this passage I was so troubled that such a world-famous author could have such foul opinions and never once in the essay refer to a time when he witnessed the savages performing their absurd war cries.

In class today, we discussed the similarities between racism in today's society and how it differs from 19th century racism. Some classmates mentioned how people today are just as racist as they were back then, but the difference is that today people who have such racist views and verbalize them are the out liars of society, which is the opposite of how it used to be. Today a person in class considered our modern prison system to be a form of racism and that we are still taking advantage of slavery in the 21st century. Although this is a good point, I believe that it is a matter of class rather than race. In today's society, a man or woman of any race can be sent to prison and be made to work for virtually no pay. Although the prison system is overwhelmingly colored, there is still a vast amount of white people in prison working for no pay. This makes the issue a matter of class inequality because the people who are forced to do the slave labor are prisoners, a status given to them by their society. This differs from Dickens' opinion because he found that people in Britain who were of the working class to be noble people, and that the wealthy could learn a lesson from observing them. He contradicts his belief of the noble working class when he insults people of color who are "less civilized" than he is. Dickens find nobility in a different class, but not in a different people, whereas today we find people of a different class, prisoners, ignoble.