Comprehension

1.    Where are the children? What are they doing?

The children are in a large stone hall, a room reserved to the children’s alimentation called canteen. They are waiting to receive their daily meal.

2.    What do the children do after they have finished eating? Are they happy with their food?

When the children have finished eating, they look the copper, with eager eyes, because they are hungry and they want another basin of gruel. The children aren’t satisfied by their food, because it is always the same and because it is given in a small portions.

3.    What do the children decide to do? What does Oliver do?

The children decide to send a boy to ask the increase of gruel’s portions to the master.  This task must be performed by Oliver Twist. When the evening arrives and after the gruel is served out, Oliver advances to the master asking him another portion of gruel.

4.    What are the reactions of master, beadle and board?

The reaction of the master to Oliver’s request is to gaze the boy with incredulity. After that he pulls a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle. Besides he immobilizes the boy. The board and the beadle are surprised about the situation: they didn’t expect that a boy presented that demand to the master. They consider that the better punishment is the hanging.

 

Interpretation

1.    What is your reaction to the story? Are you: amused, irritated, surprised, puzzled, bored, saddened…?

My reaction after the reading of the story is a surprised reaction because I expected a different punishment such as some days without eating. Besides I feel compassion a bit because Oliver has a difficult life: he hasn’t a family and at the same time he is treated in inhuman conditions.

2.    Focus on the main features of Dickens’ style: find examples of contrasts.

“Of this festive composition”: there is nothing to festive in the children’s life.

 

3.    Focus on the main features of Dickens’ style: find examples of hyperbole.

“The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again”: it is impossible to give back the brilliance to something if we don’t wash it.

“The spoons being nearly as large as the bowls”: spoons are always smaller than bowls.

“They could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed”: human being isn’t able to eat bricks.

 

4.    Focus on the main features of Dickens’ style: find examples of repetitions.

“The master, in his cook's uniform”: Dickens refers more times to the cook’s wear.

“The gruel”: the children’s meal is presented a lot of times because Dickens wants to put in evidence the lack of nutrition in children’s alimentation.

“Basin and spoon”: it highlights the poverty of the society and the lack of tools such as knives and forks, useful to eat.

 

5.    Who does the author sympathize with, the boys or the board?

In my opinion the narrator doesn’t express a clear opinion about the events and what happens, but I think that Dickens sympathizes with Oliver Twist because it seems as if he feels compassion for the boy and his particular situation.

 

 

6.    What type of narrator does Dickens use?

Dickens uses a third person omniscient narrator. Besides the reader can notice that the narrator is unreliable in some occasions because he uses some hyperboles (exaggerations). So he doesn’t represent reality in a right way. But in the most part of the work  he is a reliable narrator because he presents the nineteenth’s society describing all the real negative aspects.

 

7.    What characterizes this type of narrator?

A third person omniscient narrator is characterized by the knowledge of all the events. Besides he knows all the characters of the work.

 

 

8.    What is the author’s serious aim in telling this episode?

Dickens’ aim is to present to the reader the drama of English society of the nineteenth century. He puts in evidence some aspects such as poverty and injustices. Dickens wishes a total change in the society to create a nation in which the main values are freedom and equality.