Illustration in Charles Dickens' The Chimes

The Chimes By Charles Dickens is a New Years story of reconcilliation and renewal. But that is not all, there are Goblins and time traveling dreams in a plot similar to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but made breaking into the new year rather than feeling the spirit of Christmas.

The illustration by Arthur Rackham occurs in the second quarter of The Chimes. The story is divided into four chapters, or quarters, and this illustration is presented in the later part of the second quarter, but the scene depicted in the illustration does not occur until the beginning of the third quarter. At first this seems like some intense foreshadowing, depicting an intense scene, introducing the goblins before they appear in the story. But, the greater context of the published book itself provide a different reasoning for the placement of this image.

This book is a limited-edition version of Charles Dickens’ The Chimes. This book would have been bought as a collector’s item at a relatively high price. It is very likely that the readers of this particular piece would have been very familiar with the story, so the placement of the illustration would not have caused the reader to wonder what is coming next, rather the scene pictured would be expected for the readers.

While the placement of the illustration is not adding much to the story experience, the perspective of the illustration is. In the story the scene is seen from a character’s perspective inside the bell tower on the cathedral pictured. All descriptions in the written text are portraying what is able to be seen from inside the bell tower during the scene. This illustration, on the other hand, has a perspective that is outside the bell tower. The perspective of the illustration gives the readers a more expanded view of the scene. When combined, readers get both and inside and outside view of a turning point in the story.