Word: dickensian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...vicious troll with a righteous grudge: his rich parents dumped him in the sewer when they saw he had flippers for hands. Now he wants to be loved and, even more, elected -- mayor of Gotham City. In DeVito's ripe performance, Penguin is a creature of Dickensian rhetoric, proportions and comic depth...
Taken in pieces, Chang's narrative can be prosaic. But in its entirety, the author achieves a Dickensian tone with detailed portraits and intimate remembrances, with colorful minor characters and intricate yet fascinating side plots. There is a Chinese art of forgetting. Wild Swans is proof that there is an art of memory as well...
...public execution issue goes beyond legality. It ranges towards the What Kind Of Society Is This? kind of questions that make most of us squirm. Some people fear that videotaped executions will stir up what Time called a "disquieting Dickensian excitement...
...case are troubling emotional questions about whether a social need is met by graphically showing justice being served in its most extreme form. Viewing an execution could repulse so many people that it might lead to a backlash against the death penalty. Or it could kindle a disquieting Dickensian excitement that appeals to society's most morbid instincts. Or, at a time of fear about rising lawlessness, televised executions might grimly satisfy the public's urge to see that society's most brutal criminals receive the full brunt of justice...
...line with the court's recent law-and-order tilt, there was a surprise dissenter: conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Arguing that a 24-hour delay was the constitutional limit, Scalia fumed, "Hereafter a law-abiding citizen wrongfully arrested may be compelled to await the grace of a Dickensian bureaucratic machine as it churns its cycle for up to two days...