Charles Dickens - "Oliver Twist" and "Hard Times", Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Charles Dickens - "Oliver Twist" and "Hard Times" e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. He had unhappy childhood because he had to work in factory at the age of 12. In 1832 he became a newspaper reporter with the pen name Boz. In 1836 Sketches by ‘Boz’ articles about London people and scenes were published in instalments. In the same year he published the second series of Sketches by ‘Boz’. In this way, Dickens started a full-time career as a novelist, whose stories still bring Victorian London to life, and he was immensely popular during his own lifetime. His readers were middle and upper middle classes, because Dickens himself belonged to middle class. The protagonists of his autobiographical novels, Oliver Twist, that was begun in 1837 and continued in monthly instalments until 1839, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit, became the symbols of an exploited childhood. Other works include Bleak House, Hard Times and Great Expectations, that set against the background of social issues, like the conditions of the poor and the working class. Dickens died in 1870. Dickens shifted the social boundaries of the novel. The first thing he changed was that middle class world was replaced by that of the lower orders. Also, he created his own characters: they caricatured through he exaggerated and ridiculed particular social characteristics of the middle, lower and lowest classes and he created weak female characters. He was always on the side of the poor and the working class. He wasn’t a politician or an intellectual. He wanted to make a change through the sensibility of people, humour, irony but no sarcasm. He wasn’t a socialist or an anarchist and he never encouraged the lower classes to rebel. Children are the most important characters in Dickens’s novels. They become the moral teachers, the examples instead of the imitators. He reverses the natural order of things and opposes wise children to worthless parents. His novels were influenced by the Bible, fables, the 18th century novelists and by the Gothic novels. London was the privileged setting for his novels because he seemed to have something new to say and showed an intimate knowledge of it. His critical attitude towards his society was due to his consciousness of impact of industrialism, which modified the daily reality. In his novels, we can find some recurring themes, like family, childhood and poverty. Dickens’s children are either innocent or corrupted by adults. Also, most of these children begin in negative circumstances and rise to happy endings which resolve the contradictions in their lives created by the adult world. In particular, his novels highlight all the great Victorian controversies, such as the faults of the legal system (Oliver Twist) and the horrors of factory employment (Hard Times). Dickens’s novels have a didactic aim. In this way, he wanted that the wealthier classes acquired knowledge about poor around them. He tried to persuade the common intelligence of the country to alleviate social sufferings. Dickens did not encourage discontent, but to make the ruling classes aware of the social problems. Dickens’s style is very rich and original. The main stylistic features of his novels are:  several details, not strictly necessary;  repetitions of the same words and sentence structures;  the same concepts are expressed more than once, but with different words;  use of antithetical images and ideas in order to underline the characters’ features;  exaggeration of the characters’ faults;  suspense at the end of the episodes or introduction of a sensational event to keep the readers’ interest. Charles Dick ns Characters Narrative Themes Aim Style Oliver Twist appeared in instalments in 1837 and was later published as a book. It fictionalises the humiliations Dickens experienced during his childhood. Twist is a name given by accident which represents the outrageous reversals that the child will experience. The protagonist, Oliver Twist is a poor boy without parents; his mother died after his birth and he is sent to a workhouse in unhuman way. Oliver commits the unpardonable offence to ask more food and the parish official offers five pounds to who takes care want of him. But later he is sold to an undertaker and, after he saw the cruelty and unhappiness, Oliver runs away to London. There he falls into the hands of a gang of young pickpockets, trained by Fagin. But Oliver he was wrong on his first attempt at theft. Theft victim, Mr Brownlow, was struck by Oliver’s unkempt appearance and rather than charging him, he takes him home and takes care of him. However, Oliver is kidnapped by Fagin’s gang and during the job he is shot. But fortunately, Oliver is adopted by Mr Brownlow. At the end of the novel, Oliver discovered that he has noble origins and the gang of pickpockets and Oliver’s half-brother (Edward Leeford), who wants to ruin Oliver for having their father’s property, are arrested. As in most of his novels, the setting is London. Here, Dickens attacked:  the social evils of his times;  the world of the workhouses, that founded upon the idea that poverty was a consequence of laziness: here the conditions were appalling and they did not provide any means for social or economic advances;  the officials of the workhouses because they abused the right of the poor as individuals and caused them further misery. In this novel, Dickens inserts three different social levels:  the parochial world of the workhouses, that are belonged to lower middle class, are insensible to the poor;  the criminal world, with pickpockets and murderers;  the world of the Victorian middle class, who show a regard for moral values and believe in the principle of human dignity. The passage can be divided into four parts: 1. Oliver was looked after by an elderly woman in the workhouse. In this paragraph, Dickens talks about an elderly female character, a woman of wisdom and experience. But, in these words, there’s some irony, in fact this woman is far from wise. Part of the parishioners’ offerings were given to these workhouses for the care of children. But, as always, a good part of these offerings was held by the woman, there was very little left for the children. 2. The conditions in the branch-workhouse were really miserable. First of all, Dickens talks about an experimental philosopher, who thinks that a horse being able to live without eating. It’s clear that Dickens, through this example, is talking about the condition of children in the workhouses. Unfortunately, the horse died, just like children. And, if someone asked for some food, they certainly wouldn’t give it. 3. Religious authorities did not effectively control the way children were treated. In fact, they were in a sense, complicit in such situations, so that, when they went to workhouse for the periodical inspection, the day before they sent the beadle to warn of their arrival. In this way, children were cleaned and arranged, which did not happen every other day. 4. Oliver completed nine years in the workhouse. The child was born in a workhouse, so he spent nine years of his life in there. Obviously, Oliver had not a birthday party or a cake, but he was keeping in the coal- cellar with other two young boys.  From this description emerges that these children have become puppets in the hands of adults.  The function of this description is to build up a realistic picture of the scene.  The narrator is a voice outside and his point of view is that he feels pity for the boys, showing an ironical dislike for the adults.  The theme of the passage is the awareness of social problems linked to the life in a workhouse. Oliver Twist Setting and characters The workhouse