OLIVER TWIST

EX 1       After reading this extract from chapter 2 of "Oliver Twist", the intelligent reader understands the truth of ill-treatment. The setting is the dining hall of a workhouse. Mr.Limbkins, who is the master of the workhouse, is cooking some supper, while all children are eating. Supper is not enough for them, they are all desperate with hunger and they wink at Oliver. Immediately, he asks for some more to the master. The master is a fat and healthy man, he gazes in stupefied astonishment on Oliver, then he pinions him in his arms and shrieks aloud for the beadle.  The master wishes the boy will be hung for his request.

EX2            1) It strikes me that the children suffered the hunger and that Oliver Twist would have been hung only because he asked for more supper.

                2)In my opinion, the writer sides with the board, because he reports directly and specifically what Mr. Bumble and Mr.Limbkins say, although they are in another room.

                3)I believe the main target of the writer's criticism is Mr.Limbkins, who represents all people accused of ill-treatment of children in workhouses.

                4)I believe the reader cannot form his own opinion different from the narrator's one, because it is too directly and explicitly about violence on children; the extract reports only a violent action and the narrator uses the technique of telling a story, that means he wants to address the reader's reaction to specific thoughts and feelings.

EX3        a) In spite of the tragic situation, at the beginning of the story the writer reports elements like a boy who is afraid he might eat that boy who sleeps next to him because of the violence of the master.

                b) Mr.Limbkins and Mr.Bumble react after Oliver's request. In my opinion, the writer juxtaposes sad and comic details.

                c) Hyperbole à "that boy will be hung"

                  Ridiculising the situation à

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY

EX1       

•·         Children are going to have breakfast with a horrible brown composition, called porridge, while Nicholas distends his stomach with some porridge, he understands how hungry children are;

•·         Mr.Squeers presents Nicholas to his first class in English spelling and philosophy, but he puts panic in all children with his terrible and profound gaze. The writes ridicules the situation showing to everybody the ignorance of the same teacher;

•·         He continues to ridicule the situation by reporting some example, like the spelling of some simple words;

•·         After that, Mr.Squeers reveals to Nicholas that he simply has to make them read some lines to teach them something

•·         School time passed heavily because of the cold and the hunger.

EX 2       1) Pupils of this school receive ill-treatment not by explicit acts of violence, but they are considered like ignorant people. They live being afraid of Mr. and Mrs. Squeers, and they eat disgusting meals and they are cold during school time.

                2) He defines his teaching method a regular education system, a practical mode of teaching. He explains to Nicholas his method maybe because the guy has to become a teacher of Mr.Squeers's school. Mr.Squeers's ignorance is revealed by the use he makes of words. One example is given by the meaning he gives of quadruped: he says that quadruped is the Latin for beast, and thus a horse is a beast because it is a quadruped.

                3)

4) Nicholas's opinion does not come out at all because the writer seems to be distant from all the characters, making only irony on children's condition.

EX 3           a) In the first part of the short passage, Mr.Squeers gives a disgusting meal to the children, and then solemnly asks them to be thankful for what they received.

                   b) Mr.Squeers is a flat character, because he does not change during the story.

                   c) It is a third person narrator who sides with the children. Indeed he ironies about the schoolmasters, describing critically children's conditions.