OLIVER TWIST

Oliver Wants Some More!

Comprehension:

•·         Where are the children? What are they doing? Children are in a large stone room in which they are fed. They are having dinner and they are hungry.

•·         What do the children do after they have finished eating? Are they happy with their food? After they have finished eating they sit at the cooper, they are still hungry because their meal is very poor. They suck their fingers in order to catch all the food's traces in their hands and nails. They are unhappy and the description of their faces focuses the attention on their feelings. They are suffering the tortures of slow starvation.

•·         What do the children decide to do? What does Oliver do? Children decide to ask the master more food because one boy said that he was afraid to eat the child who slept next to him because he was starving. Oliver was the selected boy who must ask more food.

•·         What are the reactions of the master, beadle and board? The master aims a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle and shrieks aloud for the beadle. Mr. Bumble rushes into the room where the board were sitting. He announces Oliver's request and Mr. Limbkins replies: "that boy will be hung".

Interpretation

•·         Focus on the main features of Dickens' style.

Examples of contrasts: line 47 ( a fat, healthy man), line 50 (paralysed with wonder), line 60 (..general start. Horror..).

Examples of hyperbole: line 31 (he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next to him), line 21 (with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed).

Examples of repetition: lines 46-52 (I want some more), lines 66-67 (that boy will be hung).

•·         Who does the author sympathize with, the boys or the board? The author clearly sympathizes with the boys. The intelligent reader can easily notice the gap between the author and the adults of the present situation. He feels more attached to children.

•·         What type of narrator does Dickens use? 3^rd person omniscient narrator.

•·         What characterizes this type of narrator? The reader is totally guided during the lecture, the external omniscient narrator judges each happening and decides what it is good and what it is bad. The reader is not free to analyse the situation.

•·         What's the author's serious aim in telling this episode? He wants to denounce the problem of children who live in workhouses, he reports their difficulties to survive in order to make people aware of their condition.