Analysis of Oliver Wants Some More from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist

This a pass taken from the II chapter of the novel Oliver Twist written by Charles Dickens, published in installments between 1837 and 1838. 

The passage can be divided into three parts:

1.  (lines 1 – 23) à The setting and the description of the boys’ hunger: the extract takes place in a workhouse and denounces the boys’ greatest problem, hunger. One evening the boys decide that one of them , Oliver Twist, should ask for more food.
2. (lines 24 – 38) à  The main event: At his insisting demand for more food, the master hits Oliver and goes to look for Mr Bumble, the man in charge for the workhouse.
3. (lines 39 – 50) à  The consequences of Oliver’ request: Every member of the parish board is astonished and considers Oliver’s request as a sign of his criminal nature. Therefore the boy is confined to his room and Mr. Limbkins, decided to offer a reward of five pounds to “anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the hands of parish.”

There's a third person external and omniscient intrusive narrator, the novelist had to be external to the story to have the possibility to judge each happening and decide if it is “wrong” or “good”.. In the description the narrator uses irony in order to outline his condition oh hungry, in this way, the narrator can criticize his contemporary society.

Charles Dickens uses mainly 2 techniques in his work as irony and grotesque, which cause the reader to laugh, but also a simple language and denotative and connotative descriptions.

In the industrial city of Coketown, a place dominated by grim factories and oppressed by coils of black smoke, the dark-eyed, rigid man—Thomas Gradgrind—has established a school. He has hired a teacher, Mr. McChoakumchild, whom he hopes will instill in the students nothing but cold, hard facts. Visiting the school, Gradgrind tests a pair of students by asking them to define a horse. Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a horse-riding circus entertainer, is unable to answer, but a pale young man called Bitzer gives a cut-and-dried definition that pleases Gradgrind.