OLIVER WANTS SOME MORE

From Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

The extract is taken from the second chapter of the novel Oliver Twist, written by Charles Dickens. Just looking at the title “Oliver wants some more” an intelligent reader may be curious about what could Oliver want more. The narrator wants to create a suspense about what there will be discussed in the text.

Oliver Twist is a poor boy of unknown parents; he is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. Childhood in the Victorian age was generally a cruel experience in the poor and working classes. Dickens was obsessed with children, indeed he played an important role in the sentimental portrayal of childhood. The writer’s nostalgia for the innocence of childhood is a critique of the oppressions associated with the worlds of adults, in the extract it is represented by Mr Limbkins and the figure of the master.

The extract reveals Dicken’s awareness of the social problem of his time, in this case, the terrible condition of workhouses. Their residents were subject to hard regulations: labour was required, families were almost always separated and rations of food were small and poor.

The structure of the text is organized into three sections, in the beginning of the text is described the condition of Oliver and his friends, obliged to suffer a slow starvation for three months. But one boy “tall for his age” threatened some night to eat the boy who slept next him, because he was too hungry, like all the other boys. A council was held, and someone had to ask to the master for more food: it fell to Oliver Twist.

The second part, the fact, is described in a very precise way: Dickens describes the moment of the dinner, each character and his role, and then describes the Oliver’s felling. “Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery”.

Then there is the last part, the reaction. This request has shocked the master, paralysed the assistants with wonder and the boys with fear. To judge this great form of “rebellion” was organised a board in solemn conclave and everyone believed that he would be hang or something like that. At the end the director of the workhouse, Mr. Limbkins, decided to hung Oliver, because of his disobedient and presumptuous behaviour. Furthermore, the parish offer a reward of five pounds to “anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the hands of parish.”

Dickens wants to show to the reader the inhuman condition of life in the workhouses, and he wants to arouse pity in the reader. The overall effect of the extract is of pain and suffering for poor children, it provokes the reader’s reflection about the problem of children’s condition in the workhouse. The ideal reader could be an adult or a middle class man, who can understand that the situation can’t go on. Dickens encourage the reflection in his audience. Probably the novelist hope to change the children’s conditions with the help of all the society, from the highest to the lowest classes.

Dickens uses the external and omniscient narrator, in order to comment the story events. The novelist had to be external to the story to have the possibility to judge each happening and decide if it is “wrong” or “good”. So the narrator, in his description is pity for the children, and he stresses and mocks the adults’ reaction: for a simple request of a hungry child, it had been assembled a “solemn conclave” and Oliver had been offered to anybody who wants to take him.