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Funny / The Pickwick Papers

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The book:

  • The whole rook-shooting scene.
    Mr. Winkle fired. There was a scream as of an individual—not a rook—in corporal anguish. Mr. Tupman had saved the lives of innumerable unoffending birds by receiving a portion of the charge in his left arm.
    To describe the confusion that ensued would be impossible. To tell how Mr. Pickwick in the first transports of emotion called Mr. Winkle 'Wretch!'; how Mr. Tupman lay prostrate on the ground; and how Mr. Winkle knelt horror-stricken beside him; how Mr. Tupman called distractedly upon some feminine Christian name, and then opened first one eye, and then the other, and then fell back and shut them both—all this would be as difficult to describe in detail, as it would be to depict the gradual recovering of the unfortunate individual, the binding up of his arm with pocket-handkerchiefs, and the conveying him back by slow degrees supported by the arms of his anxious friends.
  • The duel. To summarise: Mr. Jingle steals Mr. Winkle's coat to go to a ball and offends an army doctor there. The doctor sends one of his friends to deliver a challenge to a duel to Mr. Jingle, but the friend challenges Mr. Winkle, who knows nothing about the incident, to a duel instead. Mr. Winkle accepts. Hilarity Ensues.
  • The skating scene.
  • Also, the chapter where Sam Weller writes a "walentine":
    "[...] So I take the privilidge of the day, Mary, my dear - as the gen'lem'n in difficulties did ven he valked out of a Sunday - to tell you that the first and only time I see you your likeness was took on my hart in much quicker time and brighter colours than ever a likeness was took by the profeel macheen (wich p'raps you may have heerd on Mary my dear) altho it does finish a portrait and put the frame and glass on complete with a hook at the end to hang it up by and all in two minutes and a quarter."
    "I am afeerd that werges on the poetical, Sammy," said [Sam's father], dubiously.
  • Sam Weller on the witness stand during Mr. Pickwick's trial, which could also double as an Awesome moment. Mr. Perker stated earlier that he doubted the prosecution would get much out of him, and he's proven right, as Sam makes a fool out of Sergeant Buzfuz when he tries to intimidate him as he and his junior, Mr. Skimpin, did Mr. Pickwick's friends.

The stage musical:

  • Pickwick is encouraged to make a candidate speech for a local election and asks Sam for advice. Unfortunately, Pickwick is so flustered that he muddles his responses and manages to offend everyone present; particularly when he uses Sam's suggestion about the roads as what he will do for the womenfolk ("I'm going to flatten out the bumps and cover them with tar.")

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