This text is taken from Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Chapter 2

The intelligent reader after reading the title of this text “Oliver wants some more” can only suppose that the main character of this chapter is a male called Oliver. Only after reading the first two lines the reader understands the title, indeed the protagonist is a boy in a room with other children who are waiting to eat.

The text can be devided in three parts: the first one is the introduction (from line 1 to line 20); the second one is the question (from line 21 to line 29); the third one is the reaction (from line 30 to line 52). In the introduction the reader can image the setting of the story and the situation to which the boys were subjected: “the room in which the boys were fed was a large stone hall, where the master ladled the gruel at meal-times” The children into that room were in bad condictions indeed “each boy had one porringer and no more ” so they were very starving and this pushed them to make the decision to ask for some more food.

The second part starts when Oliver obliged by the others to ask to the master for some more food: “Please sir, I want some more”. That sentence is linked to the title and the reader can now understand it in its wholeness.

The third and last part shows the reaction of people around Oliver. The first reaction that the reader can see is the master’s one who becomes very pale and says in a faint voice “what!” as if Oliver had asked him for something very precious, instead the reader knows the boy only wanted some more gruel. Instead the gravity of the question is that Mr Buble who is the master takes the child to Mr Limbkins who is the chief and the result is the immidiate confinement of the boy and his expulsion: “and a bill was next morining pasted on the outside of the gate, offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver Twist”. Furtheremore Mr Limbkins says “that boy will be hung” because he considers Oliver’s request as snub and this behaviour would take him to be hung.

Oliver twist is a little boy of unknown parents who lives in a workhouse with other children like him in unhuman way and cruelly treated. Furtheremore he is unlucky because “lots were cast” and “it fell to Oliver Twist ” to ask for some more food.

The master whose name is Mr Bumble reminds to the intelligent reader that it is an onomatopeic sound and it gives the image of a fat man. Indeed he seems to be emotionless because he only follows the orders: the same portion to each one.

The writer uses a omniscent narrator through which he wants to describe childhood condition of his age. He is aware that lots of children from poor and working-class were obliged to live almost like beggars and it was a social problem of his time.

The overall effect is given by the desciption of the negative qualities of the adults present in this chapter. The writer wants to show them in their total negativity and insensibility that to the reader may seem extreme.

The ideal reader of this text is Dickens’ contemporary that is the middle class.