OLIVER TWIST

Analysis

The extract of Oliver Twist was written by Charles Dickens. It is organized in two different section. The first has an introductory function while in the second one is described children's situation in the workhouses which are institutions where poor people, unable to support themselves, lived and worked. However workhouses were uncomfortable, places of hard ship and degeneration where families were divided.

Right from the title the intelligent reader can understand that the protagonist of the novel is Oliver.

Oliver Twist is a nine years old child. He has a diminutive thin stature and a small circumference even if he has a good robust spirit. He doesn't have a home as a matter of fact he lives in an workhouse. In the first section we can find the use of pathos, speaking about Oliver Twist's breast “It had plenty of room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment..” the narrator wants to convey the idea of poverty and that children suffer the tortures of slow starvation because they eat too little. Dickens' novel focuses the attention of the readers on the problem of Victorian society in particular on poverty, exploitation of children and hunger.

In the second section we can notice religious reference: “the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at meal-time” he is described as a priest with his tunic; Oliver (who becomes the victim) sacrifices himself for the mass like Jesus. The children are in the room in which they usually eat, a large stone hall with a large metal container for boiling things. When the children have finished eating, they polish their bowls with spoons till the bowls shore again. After this operation they sit in front of the copper with “such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed”. The children suffer the tortures of starvation and pray for the gruel described as a ghost because it immediately disappears. They decide that Oliver after the dinner has to go to the master and ask him more food. Children are like animals and the master is a predator. Characters in Dickens' novels are good or bad according to the Manichean vision of the world. The master, beadle and board were both surprised from Oliver's unusual request. We can understand their reaction from these sentences: “There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance”. There is a contrast between the social position of Oliver and that of the master underlined by the description of the two characters. “A pale thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference” the first while the second one “a fat, healthy man”.

In conclusion the narrator wants to denounce the terrible living conditions of children in workhouses and the main problems of the Victorian society.