While reading Ragged Dick, I found it to be very similar to
books like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer; it follows the adventures of a
young boy while still subtly instilling values to its intended audience. It was interesting to see what kinds of
values were important for the times and how the author went about conveying
them without making the story seem like a lesson.
Overall, the material is written in
an entertaining manner to appeal to the young adults that the author is trying
to reach. However, when looked at
closer, one can see what specific values were desired in young boys for the
time. Alger repeatedly tells the reader
about how what a good boy Ragged Dick is: he refuses to steal, he does not
fight unless in self-defense, and he generally helps his peers. He also emphasizes how ambitious and outgoing
Dick is and how that is a direct influence on how successful he is as a boot
black.
There is an underlying theme of if
you are well behaved and do what is right, good things will come to you, and
Alger displays this in several situations.
One of the first instances of this moral is when Frank is asking Dick
about his early history. Dick admits to
considering stealing bread from a baker but refrained. Once the baker returned, he ended up asking
Dick to run errands for him in return for bread (Alger 53). Dick continues to
be rewarded for his altruism and honesty throughout the story further
reinforcing the moral.
The other prevalent theme in the
book that I noticed was that hard work will lead to success. In a conversation with Frank’s uncle, Dick is
told that “your future position depends mainly upon yourself, and that it will
be high or low as you choose to make it” (Alger 79). Frank’s uncle also encourages Dick to grow up
respectable and to earn an education in order to improve his future standing. From that point forward, Dick turns his life
around from gambling and spending frivolously and instead saves his money and
begins an education.
In my opinion, this book was written to help guide young boys of the time and give them a role model they could identify with. Ragged Dick has plenty of fun and mischief, but he still possesses all the important values that adults wish to see in young men: respect, ambition, good work ethic, and charity. Alger does an excellent job of writing an entertaining adventure of a young rascal, all the while sneakily weaving in morals and values that adults wish their children to learn.
Initially when I read the book I never correlated Ragged Dick to other novels such as Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, until after you addressed it. This claim strengthened the idea of morals and lessons being learned throughout the novel because that is apparent within all three books.
ReplyDeleteBy hinting at the underlying theme of behavior in your blog post I felt you were able to capture the positive behavior morals quite well. One moral I would like to add is not lying with a purpose to harm or deceive others. From the novel, one of Ragged Dick's first jobs was creating a fake news on a Herald screaming " Great news! Queen Victoria Assassinated!" (Alger 38). The novel shows Dick fibbing here and there in a joking matter, however he promised to never go back into the Herald business because he got caught lying. Here, Alger is showing that there are consequences (when Dick was threatened by the Englishman) to the deceitful lie but merely praised for the playful lie as individuals in the book and readers admire Ragged Dicks quick witted responses.
However Ragged Dick isn't perfect and it showed through his gambling and spending money on expensive cigars. Ragged Dick was unaware of the concept of saving money, which turns into one of the biggest morals learned within this novel.