1. I
wonder what they thought of me!
David expresses this feeling of curiosity
in Chapter XI while relating his boyhood trials working in the wine
factory. Specifically, the adult David thinks back on how the people
near the public house must have perceived him, a young boy eating
his bread alone. As the narrator, looking back on his life in retrospect,
David often makes such remarks, indicating how pathetic he finds
himself as a small boy with nothing to eat, nowhere to go, and no
one to care for him. The adult David feels sympathy for himself
as a young, abused boy, and as he writes, he often reflects both
on his own failings and on the cruelties the world visits on him
as a boy. This introspection shows how the older David has learned
from the experiences of his life. In particular, the early period
of David’s life described in this passage closely mirrors the life
of Dickens himself, who may have written these lines in honest self-reflection,
picturing himself alone in London at age twelve, left alone to fend
for himself as best he could.
