OLIVER WANTS SOME MORE – ANALYSIS

It is an extract form Charles Dickens from chapter 2 from “Oliver Twist”. The extract is arranged into 3 long sequences, a sequence of telling, the sequence of showing and a sequence of telling. In the sequences prevail the narrative technique.  The narrator is a third person omniscient narrator, who therefore knows everything about the characters.

It is meal time and Oliver Twist finds itself in a workhouse, children were hungry because they receive only a bowl cup of soup at lunch, and so they decide to cast al lots and Oliver is sorted out. He have to ask to the master for one more cup of soup. The reaction was violent and the master was astonished because he didn’t aspect anyone.

Right from the startthe narrator focuses the attention of the reader, on the room, a large stone hall  and the master, with the purpose to underline the difficult situation that children faced every day because they represent the lower class at hierarchical social system toward the asymmetric relation between the master and the children:

• a master rules to many children, children “suffered the tortures of slow starvation” and they became “voracious and wild with hunger” (ll. 12-13) and the master is “a fat, healthy man”,
• Oliver, asks the master another cup, and so shows his courage differently from the master that after Oliver’s words “turned very pale” (l. 30), 
• the language compares the Oliver’s polite behaviour “Please, sir, I want some more.” and master’s rudeness in the answer “What!” 

The narrator insists in the use of irony in the first sequence indirectly underlines that the boys were very hungry for example the quotation: “The bowls never wanted washing” (ll. 5-6), but immediately the irony becomes tragedy and highlights the dangerous situation that children have to face every day. For this purpose the narrator uses the passive form to explain children action as they were condemn to be always subject at master’s choices. The characterisation of the men convey the idea authoritative and oppressive. They manage to maintain their power through their relevant social power. Indeed children are allowed to have only a very limited amount of food, thus producing a sense of uncontrollable starvation. The narrator also compare the authority of the adults and the democracy of the children indeed they choose who must require another cup in a council “A council was held”(l. 18).

The language is used to underline the children’s situation at meal time indeed they indirectly communicate through the body language at meal time because they can’t speak, it seems they were constantly under siege. The words that are used to portray children behaviour belong to the animal semantic field for example: wild, voracious, devoured, to convey the idea that children and women were considered inferior, and they belong in a social position lower than the men. The emphatic and rhetorical language is used to create the irony and to make the reader laugh. But the narrator insists in the use of irony so the exaggeration makes the reader reflect on the children’s  condition.

In conclusion the extract explains the Victorian age novel values since it wants to denounce all the contradictions and negative aspects that characterised that period. For example, the idea of male adults who submitted women and children, who were considered like slaves, and the difficult situation many children were compelled to live, due to poverty, disease, lack of parents or any relatives.

The name “Twist”, though it is given to the protagonist by accident, represents the outrageous reversals of fortune that he will experience.