Notes about the Extract Oliver Wants Some More (7/5/12)

The extract is taken from the second chapter of C. Dickens' novel Oliver Twist, published in installments between 1837 and 1838.
The extract is set in a workhouse. In the first part is introduced a the main character of the text, Oliver Twist, child who lives in a workhouse. It Right from the start the reader notices there is a third person omniscient narrator, who provides the reader information about Oliver's age and his health (age and health are categories throughout the narrator presents the character). Oliver is pale, thin and small: the reader understands he does not eat frequently. In this way the narrator produces in the reader the idea of a hungry poor boy. The use of adverbs of manner contributes to create this specific idea in the reader. The narrator tells the reader also he has a very strong will: a Darwinistic attitude of life is here introduced because it is said his strong will was given him by nature or by inheritance.
"It had plenty of room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment": in this part the narrator uses irony. Mr Dickens employs language to suggest the idea of a hungry boy without telling it directly.
Mr Dickens uses the typical language of contradictory identity of the Victorian Age. The key word of the period is coal.
In this part the narrator tells the reader it is a violent period and that people and children were not allowed to complain.
In the second part of the extract the character of the master, Mr Bumble, is introduced. He distributes food during meal-times. The narrator is apparently describing what happens, but with is rethorical technique he is saying children are suffering hunger. The intelligent reader finds a distance between rethorical language and what is described: this causes laught.

Workhouses were social institutions for poor people who were unable to support themselves. During the economic depression of 1837-1844, also workhouses were in crysis, so they could not help much people. With the New Poor Law in 1834 it was established that workhouses conditions had to be the worse as possible in order to discourage laziness and the arrival of social parasites.
C. Dickens' novels showed social conditions of poor people in this period, so the system tried to improve the situation.