Chimes
A poor man's voice rings through the bells of London in this fierce, forgotten Christmas story from the author of A Christmas Carol. Toby Veck, known as Trotty, is a hard-working man crushed beneath the weight of newspaper headlines screaming of crime and moral decay. When he encounters the wealthy Alderman Cute and Sir Joseph Bowley, they make brutally clear what society thinks of him: the poor exist only to be ashamed, to apologize for their own existence. His daughter Meg dares to marry on New Year's Day, and Trotty wonders if she has any right to hope at all. Then the chimes call him to the belfry. What follows is a supernatural reckoning with the cruelty that rich men justify against the poor, and a reminder that the bells ring for everyone. Written in 1844 during the Hungry Forties, this is Dickens at his most politically furious, using the framework of a fairy tale to demand: what kind of society abandons its weakest? For readers who believe literature should make trouble.
X-Ray
