Oliver Twist Charles Dickens Analysis, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Oliver Twist Charles Dickens Analysis e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! OLIVER TWIST – CHARLES DICKENS SUMMARY : Oliver Twist is the story of a young orphan, Oliver, and his attempts to stay good in a society that refuses to help. Oliver is born in a workhouse, to a mother not known to anyone in the town. She dies right after giving birth to him, and he is sent to the parochial orphanage, where he and the other orphans are treated terribly and fed very little. When he turns nine, he is sent to the workhouse, where again he and the others are treated badly and practically starved. The other boys, unable to stand their hunger any longer, decide to draw straws to choose who will have to go up and ask for more food. Oliver loses. On the appointed day, after finishing his first serving of gruel, he goes up and asks for more. Mr. Bumble, the beadle, and the board are outraged, and decide they must get rid of Oliver, apprenticing him to the parochial undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. It is not great there either, and after an attack on his mother’s memory, Oliver runs away. Oliver walks towards London. When he is close, he is so weak he can barely continue, and he meets another boy named Jack Dawkins, or the artful Dodger. The Dodger tells Oliver he can come with him to a place where a gentleman will give him a place to sleep and food, for no rent. Oliver follows, and the Dodger takes him to an apartment in London where he meets Fagin, the aforementioned gentleman, and Oliver is offered a place to stay. Oliver eventually learns that Fagin’s boys are all pickpockets and thieves, but not until he is wrongfully accused of their crime of stealing an old gentleman’s handkerchief. He is arrested, but the bookseller comes just in time to the court and says that he saw that Oliver did not do it. The gentleman whose handkerchief was taken, Mr. Brownlow, feels bad for Oliver, and takes him in. Oliver is very happy with Mr. Brownlow, but Fagin and his co-conspirators are not happy to have lost Oliver, who may give away their hiding place. So one day, when Mr. Brownlow entrusts Oliver to return some books to the bookseller for him, Nancy spots Oliver, and kidnaps him, taking him back to Fagin. Oliver is forced to go on a house-breaking excursion with the intimidating Bill Sikes. At gun point Oliver enters the house, with the plan to wake those within, but before he can, he is shot by one of the servants. Sikes and his partner escape, leaving Oliver in a ditch. The next morning Oliver makes it back to the house, where the kind owner, Mrs. Maylie, and her beautiful niece Rose, decide to protect him from the police and nurse him back to health. Oliver slowly recovers, and is extremely happy and grateful to be with such kind and generous people, who in turn are ecstatic to find that Oliver is such a good-natured boy. When he is well enough, they take him to see Mr. Brownlow, but they find his house empty—he has moved to the West Indies. Meanwhile, Fagin and his mysterious partner Monks have not given up on finding Oliver, and one day Oliver wakens from a nightmare to find them staring at him through his window. He raises the alarm, but they escape. Nancy, overhearing Fagin and Monks, decides that she must go to Rose Maylie to tell her what she knows. She does so, telling Rose that Monks is Oliver’s half- brother, who has been trying to destroy Oliver so that he can keep his whole inheritance, but that she will not betray Fagin or Sikes. Rose tells Mr. Brownlow, who tells Oliver’s other caretakers, and they decide that they must meet Nancy again to find out how to find Monks. They meet her on London Bridge at a prearranged time, but Fagin has become suspicious, and has sent his new boy, Noah Claypole, to spy on Nancy. Nancy tells Rose and Mr. Brownlow how to find Monks, but still refuses to betray Fagin and Sikes, or to go with them. Noah reports everything to Fagin, who tells Sikes, knowing full well that Sikes will kill Nancy. He does. Mr. Brownlow has in the mean time found Monks, who finally admits everything that he has done, and the true case of Oliver’s birth. Sikes is on the run, but all of London is in an uproar, and he eventually hangs himself accidentally in falling off a roof, while trying to escape from the mob surrounding him. Fagin is arrested and tried, and, after a visit from Oliver, is executed. Oliver, Mr. Brownlow, and the Maylies end up living in peace and comfort in a small village in the English countryside. THEMES : Institutional cruelty The cruelty of institutions and bureaucracies toward the unfortunate is perhaps the preeminent theme of Oliver Twist, and essentially what makes it a social novel. Dickens wrote the book largely in response to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which represented the government's both passive and active cruelty to the poor and helpless. Although institutions show both passive and active cruelty in Oliver Twist, active cruelty is more prevalent, a move that serves to exaggerate and thus satirize this cruelty and make it seem intentional. The cruelty of these institutions, however, is not separated from the cruelty of individuals. Although the parochial board that decides Oliver s future carelessly and without sympathy is largely anonymous, the man in the white jacket generally voices the specific cruel sentiments, so that they are not presented as having come from nowhere, or just from laws, but from the individuals in power. Similarly, Mr. Bumble is often directly involved in the institutional unkindness that Oliver faces. This cruelty is not nameless or faceless, it is just so prevalent that not all the perpetrators can be named. Mob mentality The horrifying power of mob mentality is also an important theme in Oliver Twist, and one that is closely related to that of institutional cruelty. Institutional cruelty can be seen to be an example of a specific kind of mob mentality—not literally, but a mob in which individuals are not held accountable for their actions, and so can be as heartless as they like, with the blank face of the bureaucracy to cover them. Similarly, the mobs in Oliver Twist all take on lives of their owns, so that the individuals within them can display their cruelest character. We see mobs act against Oliver, the most striking example of which is when he is accused of stealing Mr. Brownlow’s handkerchief. We also see mobs act against Oliver, the most striking example of which is when he is accused of stealing Mr. Brownlow’s handkerchief. We also see mobs act against the antagonists in the novel. Bill Sikes becomes a victim of a mob, and although we know that he is guilty, as opposed to charity-boy, is often made fun of for his occupation and put down by other boys; this does not lead him to have a sympathetic view of Oliver. Instead, he takes his first chance to be better than someone else, and bullies Oliver as much as he can. Similarly, characters like Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Sowerberry seem especially intent on making sure that those below them stay below them, and treat them with disdain and cruelty. This involves, among other things, underfeeding them, which comes to symbolize the institutional cruelty to the poor in the novel. It is this underfeeding which leads to Oliver asking for more, and this act, this complaining about the malnourishment, is so against everything that the board of guardians stands for that it leads to their complete misunderstanding of Oliver's character - a misunderstanding that follows Oliver for a good portion of the story. Oliver's outrage at Noah's insult to his mother is blamed on his being overfed: for the poor to receive any more than the bare minimum nutritionally is not only a nuisance to those who care for them, but is seen as morally wrong. The importance that food takes on in this opening section of the novel recalls the way that government policies toward the poor can alter society's attitudes. The New Poor Law Amendment of 1834, to which in part Dickens wrote Oliver Twist as a response, did indeed place a premium on conserving resources in caring for the poor, and provided workhouses with several choices for menus, all of which involved very limited portions. Dickens shows this policy not only harming the poor in its enactment, but also hurting them because its passage justified it as a moral stance, which permeated society. This section also emphasizes the powerlessness of children, especially children without parents to stand up for them. Oliver is completely at the mercy of the board and Mr. Bumble, who fail to understand him. The reader sees Oliver as a meek, good-hearted, kind and helpless boy, while the board and Mr. Bumble, and later Mrs. Sowerberry, see him as intentionally vicious, ungrateful, and greedy. Whenever Oliver tries to speak to anyone to defend himself or voice a desire, he is misheard, ignored, or almost intentionally misunderstood. Thus, not only does Oliver have no legal or physical power, he does not even have a voice. While on the road, Oliver decides to make London his destination - €€according to a sign post, it is seventy miles away. His first day he manages to walk twenty miles, with only a crust of bread and little else. He keeps walking, getting weaker along the way and having to beg for food and water. After a week of walking, he arrives in the town of Barnet, and is by then too weak to stand. He sees a boy watching him, who appears to be about Oliver s age but has the airs and manners of an adult. This boy buys Oliver a meal and asks him if he is on his way to London. He tells Oliver that he can introduce him to an old gentleman who will give him a place to stay and not ask anything in return. Chapter 8 – 14 Analysis This section takes us to London, where Oliver meets both the best and worst characters of his life thus far. In meeting the artful Dodger and Fagin, Oliver has, ironically, his first experience of kindness and generosity - or at least what appear to be kindness and generosity. The reader never buys it completely, for there is a certain dramatic irony in the knowledge that Fagin and the Dodger must be thieves, while Oliver truly believes that they manufacture the handkerchiefs and purses he sees them with. It is still, however, the first time that the reader has seen anyone be kind to Oliver on any level, so it is not immediately clear how evil a character Fagin is. This does not become truly clear until the end of the novel, when even his minor kindnesses are exposed to be completely selfishly motivated. Oliver s moral goodness and clarity, even after having been raised without any examples of good morals, is underscored by this, for even though this is the first time he has been taken care of on any level, the minute that he understands that Fagin and his boys are thieves, he is completely disillusioned and wants nothing to do with them. This self-interested kindness is soon juxtaposed with true generosity and kindness, in the form of Mr. Brownlow and Mrs. Bedwin. Mr. Brownlow, completely unlike any of the adults who have so far cared for Oliver, takes a moment to look more deeply at him, ignoring the fact that he thought he stole from him. Thus for the first time an adult truly cares about Oliver s personality as it really is, not as he perceives it to be or would like it to be, and Oliver becomes more than just another orphan or potential thief. Mr. Brownlow'€€s attention to Oliver is especially striking when juxtaposed with the blindness of the mob who hunts him down. Almost no one knows what crime Oliver has been accused of or whether he actually did it; all are bent only on the joy of hunting him and seeing him captured. This is the first time the danger of the mob mentality becomes clear, and it affects the reading of a similar mob scene at the end of the novel, when Bill Sikes is hunted down. This section also introduces the motif of the importance of family ties that will simmer throughout the book. At this point, no one in the novel has any idea of Oliver's family ties, but he is shown to have a very strong emotional reaction to a portrait in Mr. Brownlow's house, and similarly, Mr. Brownlow has an instinctual like of and trust for Oliver's face. Later, the same thing will happen with Rose, who will turn out to be related to Oliver. Familial relations are shown to be important, even when they are shrouded in mystery. Chapter 15-22 Analysis : This section reiterates and reinforces the theme of the powerlessness of children, while also emphasizing the powerlessness of women. Oliver is kidnapped in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, and the witnesses to the kidnapping only encourage it, because no one bothers to listen to or accept as truth what Oliver says, so his physical and legal weakness is only compounded by his inability to be heard. The misperceptions of Oliver that come with this inability are emphasized in this section. Mr. Bumble is horrified that Dick would want to leave a last letter to such an awful child; he goes to Mr. Brownlow and tells him what he believes to be Oliver’s true character, but is anything but. This inability to affect the judgments passed on him is reflected throughout the rest of this section— Oliver never again has agency, being locked up, pushed around and forced to participate in a robbery. Nancy’s powerlessness for the first time becomes clear, too. Even though it is she who originally overpowers Oliver in this section, we soon learn that she is not a pure villain when she defends Oliver against Fagin. She is successful, momentarily, more because Fagin is shocked that she would speak out against him than because she has any meaningful power over him. And although she stands up for Oliver, her stand does not last long—she faints—and does not having any meaningful result—Oliver must still go with Sikes. In Fagin, the Dodger and Charley Bates’s interactions with Oliver in this section, we see that things generally to be considered virtues can be warped in the wrong context. For example, the Dodger and Bates try to convince Oliver that it is unfair for him not to work for his keep at Fagin’s—this generally would be considered a virtuous stance, but in this case, that work is crime, and so Oliver’s refusal to do it becomes the moral choice. Similarly, Fagin gives Oliver a long lecture on loyalty, often deemed a virtue, but here it means loyalty to this thieving gang who keep him against his will. Dickens is not one-sided on the issue of loyalty, however. Oliver is certainly not blamed by the text for feeling no loyalty towards Fagin or his boys, but Nancy’s inability to betray them completely is presented as fairly virtuous. Loyalty is thus presented as something not inherently good or bad, something that can be moral, but something that can also at times be amoral, if not immoral. CHAPTER 23- 29 Analysis : This section opens with Dickens building suspense as much as he possibly can. The last section closed with Oliver, shot and losing consciousness, being dragged off by Sikes, but Oliver then moves to Mrs. Corney and Mr. Bumble and their awkward and economically-driven flirtation, saying nothing about what has happened to the novel’s protagonist. This is followed by a meta- commentary on this use of suspense, for when Dickens takes us back to the thieves, it is only to see Fagin fail to find anything out, and be slowly tortured by Crackit’s over the top building of suspense. In Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Corney’s flirtation, Dickens is at his satirical best. Although this is the first “romantic” scene in the novel, as a hapless Mr. Bumble becomes attracted to Mrs. Corney in his accounting of her silver and fine clothes, we see the least idealistic portrayal of human relations possible. Both figures are presented to the reader as comic and certainly not attractive, and their bumbling dance of courtship reflects this total lack of romance. This is partially due to both lover’s lack of character—both are completely put out and offended when any of the pauper’s entrusted to their care asks for help, both feel no guilt in using the money and resources provided for the paupers for themselves. This also reflects, however, a general distaste for the even with the knowledge that to return to Sikes is probably to give her life, she will not leave or betray them. In this way, although Nancy exerts agency in trying to help Oliver, she can exert no agency in trying to help herself, and thus is ultimately powerless. CHAPTER 41-45 ANALYSIS : Although loyalty as a virtue in and of itself is questioned throughout the text, in this section it becomes clear that when given to those who deserve it, it is a rare and important asset. Mr. Brownlow, who we had been led to believe had given up faith in Oliver after hearing about him from Mr. Bumble, is here shown to have never given up faith at all—even in the face of all evidence to the contrary, he did believe in Oliver’s goodness. This ability to have faith in Oliver, even after having been hurt so deeply in the past, reflects well both on Mr. Brownlow and on Oliver himself. Contrastingly to the above, in this section Fagin’s true evil becomes clear for the first time. Throughout the novel, it has been clear that Fagin is motivated largely by greed and selfishness, but he still on some level cared for Oliver and Nancy, which made his character seem at least more complex, at most more forgivable. But in this section, what at first appears to be one of his kindest, most fatherly, least manipulative moments—when he tells Nancy that he is there for her, that she doesn’t need to let Sikes treat her so badly—turns out to be anything but. Instead, Fagin is only trying to manipulate Nancy so that she will kill Sikes, so that Fagin won’t have to worry about Sikes, who knows too much for Fagin’s liking, anymore. Fagin, here, is purely motivated by self-interest and greed, but beyond even that, is distasteful in his unwillingness to do his own dirty work, a trait he has shown throughout, but never so dramatically. This also highlights Fagin’s hypocrisy, for he will feel utterly betrayed by Nancy’s actions later, even though she protects both Fagin and Sikes’s lives, while he here is completely prepared to try to cause Sikes’s death. His supposed loyalty, thus, is only to himself. Noah Claypole’s reemergence in this section serves to complicate the depiction of the thieving underworld that Dickens has so far offered. Although almost all of the characters involved in this world have so far been depicted at least largely negatively, Noah adds a new dimension to the mix. His badness is comic, and does not seem as extreme as some other characters, but with his joining of Fagin’s group it becomes clear that he is selfish even for a thief, as well as cowardly and foolish. This both serves to complicate our understanding of characters like the Dodger and Bates, who, though clearly flawed, are loyal to each other and to Fagin, and are at least hardworking and courageous in their thievery, as well as to underscore the dichotomy between London worldliness and suburban naivete. Like Mr. Bumble when compared to his London counterparts, Noah comes off as bumbling and comic even in his attempts at crime and badness. CHAPTER 46- 50 ANALYSIS: This section contains some of the most harrowing and dramatic scenes of Oliver Twist. Nancy’s death represents her ultimate inability to escape the life that she was born into, even though she showed signs of having a moral core not unlike Rose’s. That her death is caused by Fagin’s betrayal when she refused to betray him, underscores both how much better her character is than his, and how skewed the balance of power in their relationship is. Sikes’s total physical power over her, and how little effect her begging has on him, further emphasizes this. Sikes’s character, however, is complicated following his most purely evil act of killing Nancy. When he does, he is described as a beast, and thus does not even seem to have control over himself, to the extent that he cannot even watch as he strikes the fatal blow. Sight and eyes then take on a very important significance, as Sikes becomes haunted by Nancy’s eyes. This haunting symbolizes Sikes’s conscience, which, though weak, is shown to at least exist. He can barely function, wanders in circles, and ends up going right back to London and almost certain capture because of those haunting eyes. And in the end, it is those eyes, his conscience, which cause him to slip and so accidentally hang himself, enacting justice on himself. The mob scene leading up to Sikes’s death, though satisfying in the fact that the mob is on the right side, that the man who murdered Nancy is going to be captured, is still disturbing. It recalls the earlier scene when Oliver was chased, incorrectly, by the mob, which reminds us that though the mob is correct this time, it is not because they are moral, or even interested in the truth—it is just luck that they happen to have chased the guilty party. With the mob acting, in a way, in lieu of a court, this becomes all the more disturbing, and recalls a hunt rather than a trial. This problem of mob justice is also reflected in Mr. Brownlow’s story of Oliver’s birth, for it shows that judgment on people should not be black and white, but is complicated, a fact which capital punishment tries to avoid. Oliver’s parents were not married to each other, Oliver’s father was married to another, and yet though this is a significant sin, neither Mr. Brownlow nor the narrator blame them or judge them absolutely, for they were truly in love, and, additionally, their union resulted in the pure and kind Oliver. CHAPTER 51- 53 ANALYSIS: This section of Oliver essentially wraps up any remaining loose ends. Justice is served, again and again, and almost all of the characters get something close to what they deserve. Oliver and Rose learn their familial origins, and in so doing, both learn the root of their early liking of each other and finally become part of a real family. They also both are now able to take on their surrogate families—Oliver of Mr. Brownlow's, Rose of Harry's—which further emphasizes the importance of knowledge of one’s own roots. The Bumbles receive the most poetic of ends, losing their jobs and landing in the workhouse themselves, where, undeniably, they are mistreated as they mistreated so many before. This giving of happiness to those who deserve it and meting out punishment to the rest reflects Dickens’s love of fantasy: while he wanted to make a point about the treatment of the poor and helpless in Oliver Twist, he wanted the reader to enjoy it, and so he gives a better ending than one could ever expect in reality. The ending is not perfect, however, which reminds the reader that it is, in fact, fiction. This is represented largely by Dick, who never escapes the terrible workhouse life, but dies instead. Dickens, though, also seems to have some issue with Fagin’s end. Fagin, with no one left to feel sympathy for him, is given a death sentence for his part in Nancy’s murder, along with his other crimes. The scene of his trial, however, is so like a mob scene, that it is hard to believe that such a sentence came from an impartial jury unaffected by the overpowering assurance of the mob. This feeling is reinforced as the date of his death approaches. Fagin is never redeemed, he doesn’t ask for forgiveness from Oliver when given the chance, and he never truly repents. Thus shouldn't his death be satisfying on a narrative level? It is not. Fagin's deeply pitiful status by the time his execution day arrives, and the knowledge that he did not in fact lay a finger on Nancy, makes his demise hard to take. The brutal juxtaposition Dickens makes between the gallows and the tools of death, and the sun rising and people gathering in excitement to watch the execution, furthers this feeling that Fagin is being killed for the public’s enjoyment, not for justice. The novel ends by reinforcing its dichotomy between city and countryside. All of the good characters end up living in the countryside together, in peace and prosperity and happiness, while those left in the city are either dead, in jail, or continue to live a life of crime. This makes it seem impossible for Oliver and his new family to have ever lived in true happiness in London, where so many awful things have happened throughout the novel. Instead they inhabit a village that represents a new community and a new, more hopeful start.