Great Ambitions does not directly tackle any social issues, but it does note social problems that influence Dickens's life and writing. Dickens is appalled by the treatment of London's poor that he witnesses firsthand on his tours with Inspector Field into the slums. Another social condition that concerns Dickens is the degrading fraud of boys' academies and boarding schools in which students are abused—the most scathing indictment of this problem appears in Nicholas Nickleby. Other social issues that indirectly appear in Great Ambitions will later be dealt with in Dickens's novels: poor boys being taught to steal in Oliver Twist; London's slum orphans and the insensitive bureaucracy of the law courts in Bleak House; and strikes and labor unions in Hard Times.