Dickens’s lesson for world

Sir — I support Brian McDevitt’s exhortation in regard to ‘A Christmas Carol’ (Letters, Sunday Independent, December 10). It’s a marvellous story which will always be associated with Christmas and Charles Dickens.

Scrooge was one of his great characters. There were many others also drawn from all walks of life from that period and I have to hand a record of Dickens’s characters.

Mr Bumble, the beadle, who ran the workhouse in Oliver Twist with a rod of iron — and ended up an inmate of the same institution himself. Then there was Mrs Gummidge, from David Copperfield, who described herself as ‘a lovelorn creetur’ but eventually found happiness married to a Mr Peggotty.

There are 96 characters who come under the heading of ‘gentlemen’ in the list that I have. The number of ‘ladies’ is 60, although this is enhanced by the addition of 12 ‘landladies’! The rest of the characters come under specific occupational headings.

Last, but by no means least, in fact he is my favourite character of Dickens, is Joe Gargery, a blacksmith in Great Expectations who is described as a ‘simple, unlettered, truehearted man’.

If Dickens wanted to deliver a message over and above the entertainment value of his stories, it was surely to enhance the role that everyone plays in running this world of ours. Paddy Clear, Parteen, Limerick