Oliver Twist detailed plot summary and theme analysis, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Oliver Twist detailed plot summary and theme analysis e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Oliver Twist Plot summary. Workhouse years Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune, raised in a workhouse in the fictional town of Mudfog, [not specified in the final edition of the book] located 70 miles (110 km) north of London. He is orphaned by his father's mysterious absence and his mother Agnes Thingummy's death in childbirth, welcomed only in the workhouse and robbed of her gold name locket and ring. Oliver is meagerly provided for under the terms of the Poor Law and spends the first nine years of his life living at a baby farm in the 'care' of a woman named Mrs Mann. Oliver is brought up with little food and few comforts. Around the time of Oliver's ninth birthday, Mr Bumble (who always wears his tricorne hat), the Parish beadle, removes Oliver from the baby farm and puts him to work picking and weaving oakum at the main workhouse. Oliver, who toils with very little food, remains in the workhouse for six months. One day, the desperately hungry boys decide to draw lots; the loser must ask for another portion of gruel. This task falls to Oliver himself, who at the next meal comes forward trembling, bowl in hand, and begs the master for gruel with his famous request: "Please, sir, I want some more” (he is malnourished by the people of the workhouse who follow Dickens’s criticised “experimental philosophy”). Dickens is ironic by saying that everybody would want to live in such a paradisiac place. The workhouse council is described as fat and greedy. Dickens is still ironic when he says that unfortunately they had some costs due to the death of some workers because they had to resize their clothes as they were so malnourished that they were skeletal. A great uproar ensues. From here on out Oliver is taken as an example of punishment at the workhouse. The board of well-fed gentlemen who administer the workhouse hypocritically offer £5 to any person wishing to take on the boy as an apprentice. Mr Gamfield, a brutal chimney sweep who beats his donkey as he arrives, almost claims Oliver. However, when Oliver begs despairingly not to be sent away with "that dreadful man", a kindly magistrate refuses to sign the indentures. His kindness makes Oliver sweep. The council thinks that Oliver has to be sent to work on a ship so that the captain can be beaten up undisturbed until the kid is dead. Later, Mr Sowerberry (who notices Bumble’s buttons’ symbol: the good samaritan helping the people in need, highlighting the hypocricy of the character), an undertaker employed by the parish, takes Oliver into his service. He treats Oliver better, although he has to sleep between coffins, and, because of the boy's sorrowful countenance, uses him as a mourner at children's funerals. Mr Sowerberry is in an unhappy marriage, and his wife looks down on Oliver and misses few opportunities to underfeed and mistreat him. He also suffers torment at the hands of Noah Claypole, an oafish and bullying fellow apprentice and "charity boy" who is jealous of Oliver's promotion to mute and who also comes from an orphanage, and Charlotte, the Sowerberrys' maidservant, who is in love with Noah. Wanting to bait Oliver, Noah insults Oliver's mother, calling her "a regular right-down bad 'un". Enraged, Oliver assaults and even gets the better of the much bigger boy. However, Mrs Sowerberry takes Noah's side, helps him to subdue, punch, and beat Oliver, and later compels her husband and Mr Bumble (without his hat, seems a futile information but Dickens goes on by saying how it’s normal to lose your temper in a situation of emergency), who has been sent for in the aftermath of the fight, to beat Oliver again. Once Oliver is sent to his room for the night he breaks down and weeps. The next day Oliver escapes from the Sowerberrys' house and later decides to run away to London to seek a of 1 8 better life. Before his departure he goes by the orphanage and meets Dick, his only friend who blesses him before seeing him go. Oliver is very lonely and sad and hated by everyone. He manages to make it to London thanks to a penny he earned during a funeral from Sowerberry and thanks to the help of an elder who sees him and helps him by giving him some food. Even a stage coach refuses to help him because he doesn’t make it up to the top of the hill on his own legs. London, the Artful Dodger and Fagin Nearing London, at Barnet, Oliver encounters Jack Dawkins, a pickpocket more commonly known by the nickname the "Artful Dodger", and his sidekick, a boy of a humorous nature named Charley Bates, but Oliver's innocent and trusting nature fails to see any dishonesty in their actions. The Dodger provides Oliver with a free meal and tells him of a gentleman in London who will "give him lodgings for nothing, and never ask for change". Grateful for the unexpected assistance, Oliver follows the Dodger to the "old gentleman's" residence, in the most filthy streets he has ever saw. They live in Whitechapel. In this way Oliver unwittingly falls in with an infamous Jewish criminal known as Fagin, the gentleman of whom the Artful Dodger spoke. Ensnared, Oliver lives with Fagin and his gang of juvenile pickpockets in their lair at Saffron Hill for some time, unaware of their criminal occupations. Once again Dickens uses irony to say that the pickpockets wants to help Oliver by taking off of him his goods, while instead they are actually trying to rob him. He believes they make wallets and handkerchiefs. Fagin’s avarice and greed is highlighted when Oliver sees him playing around with a lot of jewels he keeps hidden. He also hears him saying that the hung kids cannot betray him. When Dodger and Bates are back they play with Fagin as he pretends to be a gentleman and they try to pickpocket him. Here we also meet Nancy and Bet. Soon, Oliver naively goes out to "make handkerchiefs" with the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates, only to learn that their real mission is to pick pockets. The Dodger and Charley steal the handkerchief of an old gentleman named Mr Brownlow and promptly flee. When he finds his handkerchief missing, Mr Brownlow turns round, sees Oliver running away in fright, and pursues him, thinking he was the thief. Others join the chase, including Dawkins and Bates, capture Oliver, and bring him before the magistrate. Curiously, Mr Brownlow has second thoughts about the boy, he is compassionate, he seems reluctant to believe he is a pickpocket. Dickens criticises the prisons where people like Oliver are arrested with no sympathy from the officers, the judge/magistrate Mr Fang mistreats even Mr Brownlow. To the judge's evident disappointment, a bookstall holder who saw the Dodger commit the crime clears Oliver, who, by now actually ill, faints in the courtroom. An officer makes up his name to not get the magistrate even more furious, he calls the boy Tom White. Mr Brownlow takes Oliver home and, along with his housekeeper Mrs Bedwin, cares for him. Oliver stays with Mr Brownlow, in Pentonville, he recovers rapidly, and blossoms from the unaccustomed kindness. Mr Brownlow notices an incredible resemblance between him and a painting of a woman he has on a wall. Dickens is once again ironic when he says that Oliver eats a broth that would feed 300 poor people. His bliss is interrupted when Fagin, fearing Oliver might tell the police about his criminal gang, decides that Oliver must be brought back to his hideout. When Mr Brownlow sends of 2 8 mob angry at Nancy's murder (Bates sees him hiding in the same spot with Fagin, Crackit, Chitling etc. and screams for help because he wants him captured). The dog dies in a similar way when he tries to jump following Sikes. Resolution. While Sikes is fleeing the mob, Mr Brownlow forces Monks to listen to the story connecting him, once called Edward Leeford, and Oliver as half brothers, or to face the police for his crimes. Their father, Edwin Leeford, was once friends with Brownlow. Edwin had fallen in love with Oliver's mother, Agnes, after Edwin and Monks' mother had separated. Edwin had to help a dying friend in Rome, and then died there himself, leaving Agnes, "his guilty love", in England. Mr Brownlow has a picture of Agnes and had begun making inquiries when he noticed a marked resemblance between her and Oliver (justifying his previous absence). Monks had hunted his brother to destroy him, to gain all in their father's will. Meeting with Monks and the Bumbles in Oliver's native town, Brownlow asks Oliver to give half his inheritance to Monks to give him a second chance; Oliver is more than happy to comply. Monks moves to "the new world", where he squanders his money, reverts to crime, and dies in prison. Fagin is arrested, tried and condemned to the gallows. On the eve of Fagin's hanging, Oliver, accompanied by Mr Brownlow in an emotional scene, visits Fagin in Newgate Prison, in hope of retrieving papers from Monks. Fagin is lost in a world of his own fear of impending death, he tells him where to find the documents. On a happier note, Rose Maylie is the long-lost sister of Agnes, and thus Oliver's aunt. She marries her sweetheart Harry Maylie, who gives up his political ambitions to become a parson, drawing all their friends to settle near them. Oliver lives happily with Mr Brownlow, who adopts him. Noah becomes a paid, semi-professional police informer. The Bumbles lose their positions and are reduced to poverty, ending up in the workhouse themselves. Charley Bates, horrified by Sikes' murder of Nancy, becomes an honest citizen, moves to the country, and eventually becomes prosperous. The novel ends with the tombstone of Oliver's mother on which it is written only one name: Agnes. Character List: - Agnes Thingummy (Oliver’s mother) - Mrs Mann, the woman who “takes care” of Oliver in the orphanage - Mr Bumble, the parish beadle - Mr Gamfield, the chimney swap - Mr and Mrs Sowerberry, undertakers employed by the parish - Noah Claypole, alias Morris Bolter, apprentice at Sowerberry’s and later at Fagin’s - Charlotte, Sowerberry’s maidservant - Dick, Oliver’s friend at the orphanage - Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger - Charley Bates, Jack’s sidekick - Fagin, malicious jew and one of the main antagonists - Nancy - Bet of 5 8 - Mr Brownlow - Mr Fang, the judge/magistrate who mistreats Mr Brownlow - Mrs Bedwin, Mr Brownlow’s housekeeper - Grimwig, Brownlow’s friend who seems skeptical but is actually a kind-hearted person - Bill Sikes, malicious criminal and one of the main antagonists - Barney, another younger jew who works with Fagin and usually helps Tobey Crackit (?) - Tobey Crackit the elegant thief who tries to corrupt the housekeepers at Maylie’s house - Tom Chitling, another guy who works with Fagin - Ms Corney, director of the orphanage and later Bumble’s wife - Martha, the lady who interrupts Ms Corney while she is flirting with Bumble. - Annie a nurse who sits near the dying woman. - Monks, real name Edward Leeford, Oliver’s step brother - Mr Slout, former director of the orphanage before Bumble and Corney - Giles and Brittles domestics at the Maylie’s house - Dr Losberne - Blathers and Duff, the officers - Harry, Mrs. Maylies’s son - Edwin Leeford, Oliver’s father - Rose Maylie, Oliver’s aunt Quanto dura? C’è un FF di 9 anni da quando Oliver nasce e a un certo punto dice che ne ha 12. ~ It’s his second novel, published monthly on “Bentley’s Miscellany”. Major themes and Symbols. In Oliver Twist, Dickens mixes grim realism with merciless satire to describe the effects of industrialism on 19th-century England and to criticise the harsh new Poor Laws. Oliver, an innocent child, is trapped in a world where his only options seem to be the workhouse, a life of crime symbolised by Fagin's gang, a prison, or an early grave. From this unpromising industrial/institutional setting, however, a fairy tale also emerges. In the midst of corruption and degradation, the essentially passive Oliver remains pure-hearted; he steers away from evil when those around him give in to it, and in proper fairy-tale fashion, he eventually receives his reward – leaving for a peaceful life in the country, surrounded by kind friends. On the way to this happy ending, Dickens explores the kind of life an outcast, orphan boy could expect to lead in 1830s London. of 6 8 Crime and punishment is another important pair of themes, as is sin and redemption: Dickens describes criminal acts ranging from picking pockets to murder, and the characters are punished severely in the end: neither Fagin or Sikes achieve redemption. Sikes dies trying to run away from his guilt, and on his last night alive, the terrified Fagin refuses to see a rabbi or to pray, instead asking Oliver to help him escape. Nancy, by contrast, redeems herself at the cost of her own life and dies in a prayerful pose. She is one of the few characters in Oliver Twist to display much ambivalence. Her storyline in the novel strongly reflects themes of domestic violence and psychological abuse at the hands of Bill, who ultimately murders her. Although Nancy is a full-fledged criminal, indoctrinated and trained by Fagin since childhood, she retains enough empathy to repent her role in Oliver's kidnapping. Poverty and social class. Poverty is a prominent concern in Oliver Twist, from the beginning when he asks for more food, to the funeral where a whole family is crowded together in one miserable room. The apparent plague of poverty that Dickens describes also conveyed to his middle-class readers how much of the London population was stricken with poverty and disease. Nonetheless, in Oliver Twist, he delivers a somewhat mixed message about social caste and social injustice. At the beginning Oliver, a poor orphan without friends, finds himself at the nadir of society. Most of the people he meets deserve their place in society, Sikes is a thug; Fagin lives by corrupting children, and the Artful Dodger seems born for a life of crime. At the same time though many of the middle-class people Oliver encounters—such as Mrs Mr Bumble or Noah Claypole and the savagely hypocritical "gentlemen" of the workhouse board, for example—are, if anything, worse, and they will find their place at the end of the novel. On the other hand, Oliver for a workhouse boy—proves to be of gentle birth. Although he has been abused and neglected all his life. This apparently hereditary gentlemanliness makes Oliver Twist something of a fairy tale, not just an indictment of social injustice. Oliver, born for better things, struggles to survive in the savage world of the underclass before finally being rescued by his family and returned to his proper place—a commodious country house. Symbolism. Dickens makes considerable use of symbolism. The "merry old gentleman" Fagin, for example, has satanic characteristics: he is a veteran corrupter of young boys who presides over his own corner of the criminal world; he makes his first appearance standing over a fire holding a toasting-fork, and he refuses to pray on the night before his execution. The London slums, too, have a suffocating, infernal aspect (dim rooms, pitch-black nights, fog and rain, cold weather etc.) In contrast, the countryside where the Maylies take Oliver is a bucolic heaven. The novel is also concerned with social class, and the stark injustice in Oliver's world. When the half-starved child dares to ask for more, the men who punish him are fat, and a remarkable number of the novel's characters are overweight. Characters. Dickens fits his characters with appropriate names. Oliver himself is, in fact, "all of a twist.” of 7 8