The Muffin and Crumpet Delivery Company Symbol Analysis

The United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company symbolizes the way that self-serving people disguise their greedy and selfish intentions by falsely claiming to be acting altruistically and in the service of others. Early in the novel, Ralph attends a parliamentary meeting in which politicians decide whether to ratify a bill that will enable a muffin delivery business to come into existence. The bill would also shutter other competing muffin businesses. The novel makes it clear that Ralph, the politicians, and others attending the meeting want the bill to pass because it will financially benefit them.

However, when making arguments in support of the bill and the proposed muffin delivery company, the politicians don’t cite profits as a motivating factor to support passing the bill. Instead, they claim that the company will alleviate injustices faced by those currently working in the muffin business and will also help consumers avoid addictions to alcohol by widening the reach of muffin delivery, thus ensuring that consumers have access to healthy stimulation (in the form of muffins) instead of alcohol. The speeches are intended to be humorous in their ludicrousness. In that way, Dickens satirizes the self-serving nature of politicians and points out how they advertise their supposed good intentions to obscure their selfish motives. The business’s mouthful of a name further highlights the absurdity and irony of those politicians’ claims by showing how bureaucratic language can be intentionally byzantine in an attempt to obscure politicians’ self-interested motivations.