TEXTUAL ANALISYS :

OLIVER TWIST BY CHARLES DICKENS

Oliver Twist is Dickens' first novel . It describes the ill- treatment of children in the workhouses of the Victorian Age.

Oliver Twist is an orphan brought up in a workhouse . Oliver  and his companion suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months. But one day a children wanted  more gruel, and so after a council, lots were cast who should walk up to the master asking for more gruel . Oliver was chosen. But after his request, the master was astonishment , and reported the event to board.

Oliver Twist represents a poor boy, and so is  the symbol of poverty caused by the Industrial revolution of the Victorian Age. According to the Victorian novel the children are used in order to achieve the sense of pathos that make the reader identify with the description. On the other hand there is also the use of Grotesque, caricature, pathetic works like a projection screen for the lower middle class, which causes the urban poverty.

The  narration is made up by a first person omniscient narrator which characterize the protagonists of the novel. On the consequence the reader can't form a different opinion from the narrator's.

In the first part of the novel Dickens pays the way for makes the reader understand more about Oliver Twist . As a matter of fact he describes the historical background. The problems of starvation " suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months"; the ill- treatment of children " he was afraid he might some night happen to eat who slept next him"; the problem of adults' s predominance on children " .

The writer surely sides with the poor children . I suppose that from analyzing the text. The choice of adjectives and verbs ( suffered, tortures), the description of the children ( wild with hanger, desperate with hanger), and the description of the children subordination to a strict  and unfair  master .

The characterization of protagonists confirms my hypothesis.

The children are aggressive because of fear of master, and because of the ill-treatment and hunger. As an example "wild with hanger, desperate with hanger " , " he was afraid he might some night happen to eat who slept next him". The children  had also strange behaviors, far from today children's behaviors: "they whispered and they even casts  a children to speak to the master". That reveal the problem of overwhelming.

Oliver is the boy who asked the master for more gruel : " Please sir, I want for some more". Deserving a bad punishment  . The child took the part of a individual who improves his condition, challenging  his master. The narrator emphasizes the superiority of the child through the other character's reactions:" The assistants were paralyzed with wonder Boys with fear".

On the contrary Dickens paints the master and the noble in a Grotesque and in a pathetic way, as a results these devices create laugh and to play down  the situation.

After all fiction in Victorian age is functional to entertain.

Hyperbole is used in the master's description:" was a fat, healthy man, he gazed in stupefied astonishment, shrieked aloud" .  Comic style is also  used in the description of gentlemen " in the high chair" and the gentleman' s dressing " with waistcoat" and in   Mr Limbkings exchange of dialogue ." Compose yourself ..." .

So Dickens representshistorical background through his novel, using the typical devices of the Victorian age, to make the reader conscious of the social problems, but also to entertain him.