The extract is taken from the second chapter of Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist, published in installments between 1837 and 1838. The title "Oliver wants some more" refers to the main character, who is a kid living in a workhouse and almost dying of starvation. Therefore, thre's a third person omniscient intrusive narrator.
The extract is set in a London workhouse, where Oliver Twist is living. He's presented as a nine-years old boy, extremely thin and pale, due to his living conditions, but also full of a very strong will. In the description the narrator uses irony in order to outline his condition and say in an indirect way that he's hungry for a lack of food in the workhouse diet. In this way, the narrator can criticize his contemporary society. The idea of a critic to the social system is reasserted in the description of the cellar where the main characters is imprisoned with two other boys for having complained for their hunger. After the introductory sequence, the narration starts in a new setting, which is a room where the children are having supper. Here, with irony and grotesque the author underlines the famine that afflicts every child there. To achieve this result he uses an extremely high and rhetoric language that is in conflict with the low condition described. In this sequence there's also the description of Oliver Twist's master, who is not similar to the children as he's healthy and fat and as a consequence cannot be sympathetic to the reader. After the dinner Oliver goes to his master to ask some more, obliged by the other kids. The request leads to an out of scale reaction of the master, who is both shocked and surprised and violently hits Oliver. The reaction is due to the workhouse mentality, where every benefit was banned to discourage laziness. The entire scene is used to further criticize in a indirect way the social institution of workhouses. After the kid rebellion, the narrator changes again setting, describing the workhouse council where the event has brought concerns and fears. Oliver Twist is seen as a criminal, as in Victorian society who wants to destroy the social order can only be a villain.
Charles Dickens uses many techniques in his work as irony and grotesque, which cause the reader to laugh, but also a simple language, due to his public, and denotative and connotative descriptions in order to make Oliver Twist a sympathetic figure.