A Rhetoric of Motives: Home and Nation in Dickens’s Novels

This article will explain how and why does Dickens use home as a symbol in his novels. The concept of home is a constant preoccupation in Dickens’s novels. The ideal house is an implicit criticism of the general condition within the total system. The home becomes a microcosm of an ideal society, with love and charity replacing the commerce and capitalism of the outside world. Home is a haven, a sanctuary, and an answer to the ills of the world. It is a protected place not only from dishonest values of the system but from alienating effects of the division of labor. The appropriate method that speaks clearly to this paper’s question is Kenneth Burke’s Cluster analysis. Burke defines cluster analysis as a critical approach to help a critic find rhetors’ worldviews through an examination of the rhetoric that forms their terministic screens. The task of a critic using this method is to notice what subjects cluster about other subjects. This paper argues that through Dickens’s novels, readers come to comprehend the virtues of love and the pleasures of home in an imperfect world. In his lexicon, the patriot is the thankful partaker in history who fights persistently to defend the beauty of his home.