Oliver Twist Essay -- essays research papers

Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, in 1883, to army the reader things as they really are. He felt that the novel should be a message of social reform. One of its purposes was to promote reform of the abuses in workhouses. In no way does Dickens create a aspiration creation. His imagination puts together a incompetent place during a bad time an English workhouse just after the Poor Law recreate of 1834 (Scott-Kilvert, 48). In the introductory chapter of Oliver Twist, Dickens moves from comedy to pathos and from pathos to sitire. He takes us from the drunken old woman to the dying mother to the harden doctor. Such rapid switches help in all the later novels to stand firm together disparate effects, to provide variety and unity, and to give that double prospect for comedy and pathos that Dickens admired in stage melodrama (Scott-Kilvert, 47). In this first chapter, Dickens also captures life and death in a single sentence, "Let me see the child, and die." (Dickens, 2) . This sums up the mothers will to see the newborn baby, and takes a short stride from birth to death. Dickens seems to create his characters to centripetal the readers eyes to the true characteristics of their nature. One of his subjects are conditi onenessd human nature and the affinity of the individual to his surround (Scott-Kilvert, 47-48). In Oliver Twist, Dickens attempts to free his characters of any catch of their environment. He muddles the message of the novel by making Oliver immune to an environment which is denounced as necessarily corrupting ( price, 86). Dickens created Olivers character to be inoffensive and innocent. He put many stressed tests on him in the bloodline of the book. Dickens comes close to endangering Olivers idealized virtue, though in the great lure scene in Chapter 18 (Scott-Kilvert, 49). This is where the child is being carefully brainwashed, first cunningly cold-shouldered and isolated, then cunningly brought in the deadly warmth of the thi eves family locomote (Scott-Kilvert, 49). Oliver was but too glad to make himself useful too dexterous to have some faces, however bad, to look upon too desirous to descend those about him when he could honestly do so to throw any objection in the way of this proposal. So he at once expressed his readiness and, kneeling on the floor, while Dodger sat upon the table so that he could take his foot in his lap, he applied himself to... ...uous are prosecuted by the rich and corrupt (Gerould, 287). The motive force-out of melodrama is the villain. The dynamic and sinister figure recognized by the audience as the embodiment of evil (Gerould, 287). The result is usually a happy one for the sympathetic character, resulting in just rewards and punishments and affirming the laws of morality and the benevolent wakings of providence (Gerould, 287). This is so true of the literary work of art of Oliver Twist. Dickens allowed virtue and steady-going prevail over crime and evil. This book w as clearly made to disposition the reality of the military man. Dickens does non create a dream world that captures the optimism of readers. He is truly showing things as they really are how hte world really is. He carefully planned his setting and his description of places so theat he could capture every detail of the hard life. As Martin Price put it in Dickens, "Oliver Twist is not a satisfying novel-it does not liberate us" (Price, 84-385). Dickens purpose was to spark a sense of displeasure through peoples hearts towards the English workhouses. He was promoting reform by getting the people "involved" in the melodramatic novel of Oliver Twist.