“Oliver wants some more” – Charles Dickens: analysis

The extract in analysis is from one of the most important novels by Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist. It come from chapter two and contains the central point of the novel narration: that one that makes the kid situation change and then the writer’s opinion regarding the social problems of his time.

A third person narrator that is all knowing expresses the narration; he adopts an external point of view and reports various characters’ thoughts.

The extract have two main sequences, which can be found without reading the text, only looking at the layout: the first one is made up by 18 lines and contains some narrative and describing sequences; the second one contains a dialogue in which is expressed the core point of the extract and maybe of the entire novel.

Both the two one have the same function: underlining the social problems of Dickens contemporaneity. The narrator focuses the reader’s attention on the children lives’ conditions. There are two different points of view: the children’s and the commanding adults’ one. The first is the same point of view of the narrator. The first sequence expresses the opposition between the two points of view using and general considerations and the protagonist ones, the second focusing on the protagonist’s actions and the other characters’ reactions.

All this can be better expressed throughout the analysis of the various parts composing the two textual parts.

The first narrative sequence can be sub-divided into four different pats.

It begins with a descriptive sequence that underlines the context in which the facts take place. The room in which the boys eat is described followed by a initial information about their conditions: normally they can eat only a little serving without any possibility to increase its dimensions (as is summed up by the expression and no more). The children aren’t considered as thinking people, but they are seen like animals. They don’t eat but are fed, like a dog is. This is the rich people point of view that is in opposition to that of the children and of the writer.

A narrative sequence follows, pointing out the lives’ conditions of the children: the portion is too little and they live in struggle because of hunger.

These two ones introduce the setting in which the scene takes place: a room full of hungry children that doesn’t have enough to eat. Now the protagonist is quoted for the first time: in the third part of the firs sequence. Oliver Twist is one of the children and his considerations about the situation are expressed using another character: a kid that suffers for his eating less than he needs that wants to rebel against who imposes him it. The boy wants to ask for more food and this I what also Oliver wants to do. The last sentence of the part anticipates the protagonist’s action that is the core point of the extract: and it feel to Oliver Twist. In the central part of the sub-sequence there is a Latinism underlining the difficult conditions of the children: per diem focuses the reader’s attention on the small portion of food that every kid can eat. It cannot be eaten more than one time a day and underlining it the writer highlights his own nervousness for the children and poor people situation at his time.

The last part of the firs sequence presents the particular situation in which the protagonist’s action takes place and focuses the reader’s attention on the figure of the main character. Oliver changes his situation speaking during the evening meal. This part can be considered an introduction for the second sequence of the extract.

It can be divided into two different parts: one made up by the dialogue; the other containing the conclusion.

The first part contains the dialogue between the protagonist and other adult characters. It begins with the sentence constituting the core point of the extract: Please, sir, I want some more; Oliver’s asking for more food. Nobody has done a thing like this before, so he doesn’t know the consequences of it, but cans foresee them. The request is underlined by his repetition by other characters, two adults that react to it with an initial surprise and a following feeling of anger. The repetition, first with the sentence Oliver Twist has asked for more! and then with the exclamation For more!, underlines also the two feeling experienced by the characters.

The second one exposes the consequences of Oliver actions: the feeling of anger of the adults ruling brings his expulsion and his “sale”. There is a changing of situation and a movement that bring the narration begin in the following chapter: the extract reports the beginning of Oliver’s adventure and misadventure.

The narrator presents it as a good thing for the child and uses the extract analysed as a denunciation of the lives’ conditions of poor children and people. The core point of the narration is the initial situation of the novel and the action that makes the facts begin and life change for the little protagonist. Oliver Twist is the story of a little, “rebel” boy, a manifest of the XIX century social conditions and of Charles Dickens’s opinion about them.