OLIVER TWIST BY CHARLES DICKENS NARRATIVE STRATEGY  ANALYSIS (CHAPTER 2 – PAG.303)

In this extract the narrator uses a simple language alternated with humor. The story is told by a 3^rd person narrator which is “near” to the protagonist Oliver Twist.

The narrator uses humor to talk about his society during XIX century. A society afflicted by children labor, children violence etc.

The narrator frequently describes the set and the situation with humor and irony by the use of some rhetorical choices that could make the reader smile. But hidden by that smile there is the awareness of  the cruelty of Oliver’s condition. So the narrator of Oliver Twist uses also the narrative strategy of the sarcasm. Maybe his purpose is to talk about his society playing on it; in this way the reader can smile and have fun but at the same time he becomes aware of the real tragedy people lived during the Industrial Revolution.