Charles Dickens’s “The Noble Savage”

In Charles Dickens’s “The Noble Savage”, he argues that indigenous people are savages and should be eliminated from the earth. Dickens begins his article by stating that he has “not the least belief in the Noble Savage”, meaning that there is nothing good about indigenous people, as some may believe (1020). Throughout the article, Dickens maintains a negative view of the “savages”, criticizing everything about them, from the way they look to the way they behave. He uses imagery such as “spreads his nose over the breadth of his face” (1020) to highlight all the differences the indigenous people had and consequently disturb his readers. He describes the people as “conceited, tiresome, bloodthirsty, monotonous humbug[s]” (1020) who have “no moral feelings of any kind, sort, or description; and [their] ‘mission’ may be summed up as simply diabolical” (1021).

Dickens also describes their customs in the most unpleasant way possible to unsettle his fellow Englishmen and provoke hostility. Instead of considering the benefits or importance of the indigenous people’s culture, he mocks it and dismisses it as bizarre. Alongside the indecent mockery, Dickens makes assumptions about the indigenous people based on nothing but his own selfish desire to portray them as savages. After quoting something said by the leader of the Bushmen, he states that it was “Bosjesman for something desperately insulting I have no doubt” (1021). Later, when discussing the wars that the indigenous people have, Dickens says, “he takes no pleasure in anything else” (1021). On what grounds can he make these assumptions? Dickens looks for ways to insert his own opinions about the indigenous people to influence his readers. At the very end of the article, his tone changes, and he suddenly becomes more sympathetic. He writes, “We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable object, than for being cruel to a William Shakespeare or an Isaac Newton” (1023). To start the passage by calling the indigenous people wild animals and then to end by suddenly comparing them to Shakespeare and Isaac Newton is a huge jump. Perhaps Dickens did this so that he would not incite too violent of a response among readers; or, if he did incite a violent response, so that he could not be blamed for it.

It is surprising that Dickens holds such an unfavorable view of indigenous people, considering that he experienced poverty himself. I believe this implies that the issue of hating the “savages” was more of a race issue than a class issue. This leads to the idea that some, if not most, people in England at that time had a superiority complex. Because of the larger population, quickly developing technology, and relatively industrialized cities, the English in the Victorian Period felt a strong sense of patriotism, and perhaps saw themselves as inherently better than everyone else. Although Dickens’s overtly racist comments on indigenous people seem shocking to us today, many other people of England probably shared the same views.