The use of the word “council” gives an altered idea of the situation: this term gives seriousness to what the narrator is telling. So the tone results both comic and tragic. The effect is indeed to make the tragic situation turn out as a comic situation. “Council” comes from politics and this choice gives the effect of tragicomic to the extract. In this sentence, such as in the entire text, everything had been studied to give a comic atmosphere and to give an alibi to the Victorian readers for the situation told. The narrator uses many semicolons to accelerate the narration up to the victim: Oliver Twist. That use of punctuation isolates the victim and increases the comic atmosphere.

Also in the second sequence, the punctuation gives the idea of a list and this makes both the narration faster and less serious. Besides the narrator tells about a “long grace over the short commons”; the tone used is ironic and the contradiction given by the oxymora “long” VS “short” underlines the contradictions of the Victorian Age.  “The gruel disappeared” highlights children voracity and their situation of starving. The narrator describes them like animals and this could make the Victorian reader laugh; instead there is a lot of tragedy behind this comic description. The Victorian reader doesn’t want to see that, because they need to build alibis and they are mock blinds. “Basin and spoon in hand” is the description of Oliver’s mission which is described like the mission of a knight. It is all built to create a comic atmosphere and to hide the tragedy behind exaggerations. The intelligent reader is the one who has to see behind the atmosphere created and understand the real idea of the Victorian age: an age of contradictions and of tragedy. An age where children was starving and an age of readers that laughed of that, because they was mock blinds: they didn’t want to become aware of the tragic condition of the society they belonged to. But they were the society and they, the readers who laughed, were probably the same which owned a workhouse. 

The description of the master highlights the difference between rich and poor children. His reaction is exaggerated, the narrator wants to show how unusual was for a children to ask more. The narrator highlights the difference from the rich children.

In the last sequence, the narrator uses again exaggeration to describe the reaction of the conclave. It creates a comic atmosphere and the grotesque consequences of Oliver’s request hides the tragedy: it seems to the reader it is not possible for that to happen.

In conclusion, the intelligent reader may perceive the tragedy behind comic. Indeed Dickens, writing the present text, denounced his society, but he had to do it hiding it behind a comic veil.  A veil the intelligent reader is supposed to take off: he has to see the tragedy and he doesn’t have to hide the truth. This is the difference between him and the mock blind Victorian reader.