Starting from the first paragraph it has an introductory function: it explains Oliver’s condition. Oliver Twist is the most important character, but also the title of the novel: the name of a child in the title suggests the poverty of his condition.

Oliver is not described during in ninth birthday, while he was working: he had a weak physique, but a very big soul and thank to this characteristic he found the force to go forward.

Then the description focuses on the setting: the scene takes place in a coal-cellar. It represents the new industrialized world that grows up, but that becomes a prison for weaker people.

The second excerpt describes a dinner in the workhouse where Oliver lives. Children’s condition is depicted through the contrast between poverty and richness (poor quantity of food-large stone hall).

Dickens uses irony to judge indirectly the condition in which children have to live: they eat their food, as they had to polish the spoon like people who polish shoes.

In addition, Dickens uses the technique of  pathos that involves reader’s emotions and judges workhouses because it explains children’s behavior like cannibals. Therefore children seem to become animals, they return to animal instincts because only the most suitable survives.

In the last scene of this part, Oliver goes to the master to ask more food and he seems to be afraid and menacing of losing his control on children, therefore he has a negative reaction using violence with Oliver.