After a description of the setting, habitual actions, living conditions of the children and their hunger Dickens provides us a narrative scene. In this extract he doesn’t write anymore about characteristics. One of the boys has to ask for more food during the mealtime and the choice falls on Oliver Twist. The fate chooses Oliver for the mission.

The following sentences are marked and shorts: Dickens wants to give us the idea of hesitation and creates a moment of climax and suspense. The situation recalls the idea of pathos and of the grotesque. The concept of “puritanism” according to which God is the only one who gives generosity and clemency. All the eyes are focused on Oliver’s figure and wait for his request. The young boy asks for more food.

The successive scenes focuses on the reactions of the cooker.

Oliver’s request scandalizes the whole room. Mr.Bumble stays silent and dazzled while the boys are terrorised.

Mr Bumble even askes for “pardon” for the interruption, underlining the typical social difference between classes during the Victorian Age..

The reader laughs and cries at the same time because of the conditions of the poor boys. Pathos permits the readers to prove compassion for the boys’ situation while the grotesque creates a kind of alibi. Readers think that there are some people worst then them and think that they are not so evil as the book’s characters.

Dickens’ uses of irony is strategic because underlines the contradictions typical of the Victorian Age, on one hand there are progress and social reforms on the other one there are bad living conditions and misery. Dickens was against this situation and wanted to denounce indirectly the injustice of the Victorian society.