Oliver Twist, Oliver wants some more, pp. 302-304

This extract is taken from Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist . The purpose of this text is to outline the difference between the lower-middle-class (working people in factories) and upper-middle class (also noble and clergy ). Thanks to that, we can understand people’s condition in the Victorian Age. The characterization of Mrs Bumble, Mr Limbkins and children is obviously different: children’s eyes are connoted as “eager”, hungry and wild, while the two adults are described as healthy and fat men (cloths show us this difference better : cook’s uniform and a white waistcoat while children’s rags).

It also demonstrates another information: child’s condition. Indeed, the extract shows the scene while Oliver Twist, one of starved children living in a poor workhouse, is asking to the master more gruel: they are hungry and want more rations of food. By the way, after his request the master, a fat, healthy man, decides “the boy will be hung”. Therefore, for 5 pounds he will become “an apprentice to any trade, business, or calling”, just like a factory defect..

What is happening is narrated by a third person narrator who knows all and sifts it from a pint of view to underline the aspect of poverty in that time: orphans were exploited thanks also to the Industrial Revolution.
The extract opens with a description of where the action takes part. It demonstrates misery of life conditions. Thanks also to paratactic syntax and the use of measure as ounces, spoons, reader can make an idea of their conditions and compare with nowadays life. The moment in which they are fed appear as a constant process of everyday. This mechanical routine seems to refer to the Industrial Revolution, the history moment took place some years before the writing of the novel.

The society described by Dickens is a frozen and heartless one, not interested in people’s needs. Oliver Twist, with his characterization, appears as disorder’s child therefore he is excluded.

Dickens and Verga. Rosso Malpelo, pp. 306 (text book 1+2)

This extract is taken from Rosso Malpelo an Italian novel written by Giovanni Verga, contained in the collection Vita dei Campi. The story is about a young boy who works as a miner. the miners had to explore a passage but no one wanted to risk. The miners who were fathers did not want to die, nor they didn’t want their own children to die (nè avrebbe permesso che si arrischiasse il sangue suo). Malpelo is therefore picked because he doesn’t have nor parents neither friends.

This text is useful to create a comparison with Dickens’ Oliver Twist.
Indeed, the two boys are both young, poor, without a family and forced to work. Their working conditions and exploitation are important elements they have in common. By the other hand, they live in two different cultural moment, while Oliver Twist lives in England in the period after the Industrial Revolution, Malpelo lives in the backwardness of south Italy: two different backgrounds for a similar condition.

The third person narrator is omniscient, thus the reader can find out the characters’ thoughts. Indeed, the phrase “si risovvenne” shows Malpelo's thinking.