The present text is taken from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. The extract starts with the description of a fed ( a room) where boys eat. The environment is uncomfortable, cold, and it convey to bad people's conditions in that period. The boys were constantly hungry, "employing themselves, meanwhile, in
sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon.".
The first character will described is the master. He is an authority figure in this context, at the meal times. He is surrounded by servants and poor children.
In this part you can see the use by the narrator of figure of speech. He uses both of irony and grotesque (as an example in the distribution of food, so few that it is not possible wasting even a crump or a drop). This is coherent with the use of the pathos, which was to arouse in the reader compassion for the misery of the children, harshly treated.
The children’s condition is described as a very difficult one: the Victorian “alibi” comes to surface. The purpose of such descriptions is to make the reader feel distant from the reality of the book and to feel “cleaned”. Also, the description reveal tragicomical situations. Oliver Twist, the main character, and his friends are introduced as children always on the point of starving; hunger is the key-word of the text, and the narrator wants to draw the reader’s attention on it. The children are described as if they were predators because they can’t bear the situation anymore: it is conveyed through lexical choices such as “wild” and “voracious”.
From the extract, the reader can catch Dickens’ interest in portraying the contemporary society and its problems. His attention towards the living condition of children may be encouraged by his society's view. The society portrayed by Dickens is a cold and heartless one, not interested in people’s needs but in its image. In conclusion, it seems that the goal of society is to keep order, to make everything rational, to prevent confusion, but beside this there is very sadness.