Book review: the pickwick papers, by charles dickens

The "Pickwick Theory"

Following the "Pickwick theory", characters consider goodwill and confidence fundamental foundation of human relations.
The nobility of thoughts and an uncomplicated sensation of the joy of life create farcical situations when the participants of the Club have a contact with the real order of things.
However, the inexperience of heroes is an ethical position dictated by the rejection of oppressive and repulsive aspects of reality, as well as an unshakable faith in the integrity and generosity inherent in people by their very nature. Naive freaks become heroes expressing Dickens's cherished convictions.
The ignorance of the relatively unattractive aspects of life and rooted human vices that the Pickwickists preserve keeps the heroes irresistible even when they fall into ridiculous positions, becoming victims of their own altruism and gullibility. The treatise on the habits of the fish that inhabits the Hampstead ponds, created by Pickwick as well as archaeological research, stimulated by mysterious inscriptions on the stone, the trick of a village joker as it turned out, is augmented by the element of the comic that remains almost uncomplicated in Dickens' first novel. Such things excite heroes causing them genuine enthusiasm, which has nothing to do with ordinary interests and aspirations.
Heroes of the novel create a special life environment around them as if not noticing the surrounding vulgarity, not seeking to learn any lessons from the encounter with examples of self-interest, intrigue and dishonor. The book is dominated by the unconditional commitment to high ethical criteria and the pursuit of ordinary happiness, which is impossible without an atmosphere of fun, contentment and peace.

The Main Character Parallels

In many aspects remaining masked characters, familiar in traditional Christmas stories with an abundance of eccentricities and an obligatory cloudless ending, Pickwick and his companions are endowed with one or two sharply pointed features, which gives each of them a resemblance to comic characters familiar in the English art of caricatures.
Initially conceived as a series of signatures to drawings related to the cartoon, the novel retained the propensity to the cartoon, inherent to such a prose, in exchange for a detailed and psychologically authentic portrait. The eccentricities and oddities inherent to the Pickwickists depict their human form with the expressiveness that does not need any domestic detail. The likelihood is important to Dickens much less than the wealth of a humorous fantasy.²