Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist, besides being the main character, it is the title of Charles Dickens’ novel.  He is a child who works in a factory. Charles Dickens’ choice of entitling his novel with the name of the child is not casual. During the Victorian Age novels usually referred to problems. In this case Charles Dickens’ will is to put the reader face to face with the exploitations of children and woman in factories. Women and children were compelled to work in hard conditions: they weren’t neither provided with an adequate amount of food per meal nor with an appropriate working schedule. They had to work for long hours without any kind of insurance. During the Victorian Age woman and children as well as animals were considered inferior, without any defense and therefore they were considered pathetic.  Charles Dickens wants to report all this in his work. In the meantime he wants to create an alibi for the factories’ owners in order to gain a larger public of readers. The alibi is built with the use of literary techniques: pathos, which allows the reader to feel involved within the novel, and the grotesque, that allows the novelist to deform the outline of the characters. The juxtaposition of such techniques creates exaggerations that is a way to make the readers’ bad conscious an alibi. As a consequence both the novelist and the factories owners were saved: the novelist from the government and the prison and the owners from the ghosts of their conscious. The novel begins with hints of Oliver Twist’s physical appearance. Right from the start the use of pathos is clear. Charles Dickens doesn’t use a straight-forward language, although he gives great importance to adjectives and adverbs. The use of the words “pale” and “thin” makes the reader immediately focus on Oliver’s unhealthiness. However the weakness of his body is in contrast with the strength of his spirit which idea is given by the description of Oliver’s breast.  As a consequence the novelist focuses his attention on the setting. The descriptions are given by an high use of rhetoric language which allows the reader to either accept or refuse everything is said.  In the following lines Charles Dickens represents the moment of a meal: a lunch or a dinner. The language used is taken from the semantic field of religion. The master wears an apron which gives him the role of the priest. He is assisted by two woman. The use of a religious code makes the reader understand that there is going to be a sacrifice. As a consequence he/she is compelled to find out who is going to be the sacrificial victim, just like Jesus who sacrificed himself for all the peoples.   The children are starving and are given just a little amount of food. Charles Dickens makes a large use of metonymies in order to point out a materialistic point of view. As a consequence the large bowl which contained the food for every children becomes the copper etcetera.  The line “Boys have generally excellent appetites” splits up the entire text. Such line’s simplicity makes the reader reconsidered everything he has just read. The children are starving and they don’t know if they are going to make it till the end of the day. That day was Oliver Twist’s birthday and he could die for starvation.  Charles Dickens points out that those children have suffered for hunger for a long time and that’s why they were slowly becoming wild. As a consequence in the following lines, the novelist describes a particular child who was afraid  he was going to eat the boy sleeping next to him. This description recalls a tiger, especially William Blake’s description of a tiger. Since the children were truly starving, the casted lots in order to ask for more food and it fell on Oliver. The main character stood up and asked the master for more food. The master’s physical appearance is in contrast with Oliver’s one. He is a fat, healthy man  whereas Oliver is slim and unhealthy. After Oliver Twist’s request, the master is paralyzed as all the other in the room. He didn’t know what to say and asked his superior for an advice who wanted the boy to be hung.