Samuel Johnson Character Analysis

Samuel Johnson was an English freelance writer in the early 1700s who wrote essays, articles, speeches, and compiled a dictionary. He suffered from tuberculosis as a child. The illness and the poorly conducted treatments he received for it left him blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and gruesomely scarred. He was sloppy and had strange compulsive tics, leading many of the townspeople to believe he was insane. He hung around in bars and went on adventures for the purpose of testing his knowledge through experience. He wrote for a newspaper that published mock speeches of politicians; his speeches were so eloquent that many people believed they were the politicians’ actual speeches. Often, Johnson wrote as a means to grapple with the demons of jealousy, guilt, and fear that tormented him. He believed that good and bad could not be easily separated, and that only paradoxes accurately captured the complexity of life. Eventually, he signed a contract to make his own dictionary, which he filled with hundreds of illustrative quotes. This made him financially stable, but he still favored the raucous pub life where he could socialize with all kinds of people. At the end of his life, he was not at peace the way Michel de Montaigne was; unlike Montaigne, he didn’t accept himself but rather relentlessly fought with himself. His work, which is known for making shrewd observations about human vice, helped lift him out of his own divided nature.