Oliver wants some more

This is an extract taken from the II chapter of the novel Oliver Twist written by Charles Dickens.

In the Victorian age Poor children were obligated to work in factories and mines or as domestic servants. Dickens presents children as poor innocents who were corrupted by adults.

Oliver was a poor boy of unknown parents, he is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. Dickens doesn’t write anymore about characteristics and physical-psychological descriptions but about the actions and about the plan organised by the boys: one of them has to ask for more food during the meal time. The fate chooses Oliver. Children are united and complicit and it reminds to to the group formation during the Industrial Revolution. There is a clear juxtaposition between the concept of democracy represented by children, and dictatorship, represented by the rigid figure of the master. Indeed the master is the antagonist of the extract. The description of master’s action and position make the reader understand that he is as an official who gives orders and instils fear. Dickens underlines that Oliver, tall for his age, is a child but he acts as an adult: he was fear but determinate, desperate but hungry and courageous. So he advances with basin and spoon in hand, exactly as he is a little hero that is fighting for his homeland, and he asks for some more. Mr.Bumble doesn’t react immediately, he stays silent and dazzled while the boys are terrorised but when Oliver repeated the question the master was very angry and incredulous.

Dickens uses the narrative technique of pathos to create an emotional involvement that make the reader cries for the terrible conditions of children in workhouses. But he also uses the grotesque that exaggerates the narration: there is a funny scene that makes the reader laugh and creates caricatures of chapters.

The narrative strategy allows the narrator to criticize the society and to denounce bad condition of living in workhouses. In addiction the grotesque allows the reader to identify with the chapters.