Quote 25
We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and, toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own. (62.76)
As David stands with Agnes, he can look back on the whole trajectory of his life, back to the moment when he was running away to Dover and Miss Betsey Trotwood. David seems to feel that he has achieved everything he wants in life by the end of the book; he has also moved us from his childhood to his adulthood. Are there any plot holes that Dickens fails to tie off to your satisfaction? Do you find all of the endings Dickens gives to his characters equally compelling or believable? Why does Dickens work so hard to resolve every single narrative plot line?
Quote 26
The deep remembrance of the sense I had, of being utterly without hope now; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day by day what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little, never to be brought back any more; cannot be written. (11.5)
When David works in his factory, he's almost in a more pathetic position than the other boys. Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes don't expect anything different from their lives. But David has been to school. He has experienced another kind of life. So, this sudden slide into a life with no future fills him with "shame" and "misery" that "cannot be written." Still, we have to wonder – do you think that it's truly worse to be disappointed than to have no hopes at all, ever?
Quote 27
'Ah, Steerforth! It's well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman's, or humour a love like my old nurse's, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you. And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!' (21.159)
David cannot imagine that Steerforth could "enter into happiness" with Mr. Peggotty or "humour a love like" Peggotty's without feeling something for them. He doesn't see how a person can understand another without sympathizing with them. Yet, Steerforth does recognize their "joy" and "sorrow" and he still decides to destroy the Peggotty family by seducing away Emily. What do you make of this link between understanding and sympathy? Do you agree that to know someone intellectually is to understand them emotionally? In a way, this logic is the whole basis of David Copperfield's style of storytelling: Dickens is asking his readers to get to know David so that we will feel for him and, by extension, the novel as a whole.