Showing results for "Nobody's Story" in Classics

Who's story is this? Nobody. - Who's nobody? The average working man.

This story is very old but very relevant. The common man's opinions are disregarded. His needs are manipulated. But of course the story makes clear that he is key to society. The story shows that. Then the narrator comes in and rather dramatically reinforces that point in the final three paragraphs just in case you missed it the first time. Yes, there's a pretty high soapbox. Yes, it's pretty holier than thou.

Originally published in the 1853 Christmas edition of Dickens' journal Household Words, "Nobody's Story" uses the differences between the Big Wig family and the Nobody family to call attention to class-based inequity. This version of "Nobody's Story" was recorded as part of Dreamscape's The Christmas Stories of Charles Dickens.

A Charles Dickens Christmas story about remembering the poor, forgotten, and overlooked once a year by the Christmas fire. This grand story sets up the bickering Big Wig family as a guide to the laboring Nobody family, led by a man named Legion, and nothing good comes of it. Legion's master discusses his losses in term of the poor and their habits and diseases. Legion points out it is one world: "What happens to us happens to you."

No writer is more identified with the modern idea of Christmas than Charles Dickens. In some ways, Dickens helped define the holiday that we now celebrate by immortalizing it as a time of warmth and sharing, with an emphasis on family and friends.