Scarica oliver wants some more e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Oliver wants some more The extract is taken from the second chapter of the novel Oliver Twist written by Charles Dickens and it is about social problems of Dickens’ time. In this extract, He wants to show the terrible conditions of working children in the workhouses. The text is organized into three sections: the first is the introduction; the second is the fact and the last the reaction. The introduction is about the terrible condition of Oliver and his friend. The scene takes place in a cold and poor room of a workhouse. Dickens presents three characters: a master and two women who were serving meal (the gruel) and the children that were obliged to suffer a slow starvation. The description is focused on things: indeed characters are all conformed and do not show an identity. Dickens makes a very detailed description of the hunger children using grotesque that is the exaggeration of tones, then grotesque generating irony: Dickens is using it in order to criticize the Victorian society, its hypocrisy and report to the reader the terrible condition of life in the workhouses, and he wants to arouse pity in the reader. At the beginning he distinguishes festive meals from meals of “occasions as portions indeed festive meals they had only one portion and occasions meals two portions with a quarter of bread; then he describes how children watched at the copper with eager eyes and the bowls that never wanted washing because staying with hunger they cleaned those not only with the spoon but also with fingers to catch all the residues and at the end of this part the narrator describes the voracity of a boy that threatened “to eat the first boy who slept next him so a council was held, and the boys decided that someone had to ask to the master for more food so they cast lots and it was chosen Oliver Twist. In the second part ( the fact) it is described in a very precise way the moment of the dinner, each character and his role, and Oliver’s felling. Dickens use a celebrative tone to describe Oliver’s walk towards the master to ask more food: he seems to be a little hero facing the evil, but he was desperate with hunger. The narrator’s aim is to convey that Oliver is a symbol of change and progress for his companions. Then there is the last part, the reaction. This request has shocked the master, paralysed the assistants with wonder and the boys with fear. To judge this great form of “rebellion” was organised a board in solemn conclave and everyone believed that he would be hang. At the end the director of the workhouse, Mr. Limbkins, decided to offer a reward of five pounds to “anybody who would take Oliver Twist off. Dickens uses the external and omniscient narrator, in accord to the role of commenting the story events and by the use of the grotesque Dickens initially makes the reader laugh, but next it also provokes the reader’s reflection about the problem of children’s bad conditions of living in the workhouses. in his works Verga has a pessimistic vision and he thinks that his characters have no chance of redemption while Dickens has a more optimistic vision because thanks to the case the men of good soul can improve their condition.
