Looking at the layout the extract taken from Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist, is organized in two sections.

The first one introduces the nine years old protagonist which also give the name to novel (in Victorian age, the title represented the content: here the name of the little protagonist provides a documentary of the situation of poor people living in the workhouses). Right from the first line, his characterization is base on the contrast between his phisical aspect ("a pain thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in cirumference") and his soul ("nature or inheritance ha dimplanted a good robust spirit in Oliver's breast"). With Oliver's description the reader comes immediately across bad condition of poor children's life-style ("it had plenty of room to expand...establishment").

The second long sequence presents the moment of the day in which food is given to children. In this part of the extract, Victorian mentality is conveyed to the reader. Primarily, the metonimic use of the language and the repetition of object in the room ("gruel, porringer, spoons, bowls, copper") evidence everithing in Victorian age was valued according to the materialistic point of view. Then all the text is influenced by the philosophy of Darwinism: here children are comapred to animales, to predator who are so "voracious and wild with hungry" that someone could also devoured one of his companions (cannibal attitude which refers to the naturalistic way according to which people eat another people to survive). Moreover Dickens uses a religious language ("solemn conclave) for describing the circumstances: the master seems to be the priest distribuiting food and Oliver Twist the sacrifical victim who asks for some more gruel. The master is described as "a fat, healthy man" (grotesque) in contrast with the small, unhealthy figure of Oliver Twist (pathos).