Togetherness: My Reflections on Old Curiosity Shop

This is my reflections towards the book I’m reading: The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. I am not planning to write about every chapter, but only now and then when I feel it necessary to put my thoughts or reflections about some passages.

From page 70:

Grandfather: “…If we are beggars—!”
Little Nell: “What if we are? Let us be beggars, and be happy.”
Grandfather: “Beggars—and happy! Poor child!”
Little Nell: “Dear grandfather, I am not a child in that I think, but even if I am, oh hear me pray that we may beg, or work in open roads or fields, to earn a scanty living, rather than live as we do now. … If you are sorrowful, let me know why and be sorrowful too; if you waste away and are paler and weaker every day, let me be your nurse and try to comfort you. If you are poor, let us be poor together, but let me be with you, do let me be with you, do not let me see such change and not know why, or I shall break my heart and die.”

They say: ‘What you don’t know doesn’t hurt you.’ It’s true sometime, but most of the time people misunderstand the true meaning of it. When we are in sorrow, we try to conceal it from others (many times from our families or they who love us) because we think that it’s better for them if they don’t know. Well, we are wrong! When I love someone, it’s not a sorrow if I can carry the burden together with him/her, for I really want to lighten it. It will be more painful to me if someone I love concealed his/her sorrow from me.

And that’s what happened with Little Nell. I think the conversation quoted above has reflected how Nell felt towards her grandfather. It’s not the loneliness which Nell suffered the most from, but that she saw how her grandfather suffered from sleepless nights and mysterious works he seemed to perform, which Nell knew nothing about. It’s not wealth that Nell needed, but togetherness. It’s OK to be poor, as long she can live it in togetherness.