Oliver Twist is one of Charles Dickens's best known stories. Characters such as the evil Fagin, with his band of thieves and villains, the Artful Dodger with "all the airs and manners of a man," the house-breaker Sikes and his dog, the conscience-stricken but flawed Nancy, the frail but determined Oliver, and the arrogant and hypocritical beadle Mr Bumble have taken on a life of their own and passed into our culture. Who does not recognise the sentence,"Please sir, I want some more!" or"If the law says that, then the law is a ass - a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience - by experience!"Dramatisations of this story abound, and there have been 25 films made of it...so far! Oliver Twist was appearing in 10 theatres in London before serialisation of the novel was even completed, so how does the original novel hold up for a modern reader? It seems pointless in this review to retell this famous story. The excellent film by David Lean from 1948 is one of the most faithful to the book. It stars Alec Guinness as Fagin, Robert Newton as Bill Sikes and a young John Howard Davies as Oliver Twist. (Davis went on to work for the BBC as a producer all his life.) The subplot with Edward Leeman is largely missed out, but that is inevitable in a short dramatisation. The essence of the story is there, and is true to Dickens, as is much of his dialogue. It's important to look not only at the writing style and construction, but at the social conditions of the time and Dickens's own personal situation. Oliver Twist; or the Parish Boy's Progress was written when he was only 25, and first published serially in "Bentley's Miscellany" where Dickens was editor, from February 1837 to April 1839. Interestingly though, it was not originally intended as a novel but as part of a series of sketches called the "Mudfog Papers". These were intended to be similar to the very popular "Pickwick Papers", Mudfog being heavily based on Chatham, in Kent."The Pickwick Papers" had been phenomenally successful, making Dickens famous. He therefore decided to give up his job as a parliamentary reporter and journalist in November 1836, and to become a freelance writer. But while "The Pickwick Papers" was still only halfway through being serialised, his readers clamoured for a second novel.There must have been a lot of pressure on the young author to maintain such a high standard. In addition to his writing and editing, Dickens's personal life at the time was typically hectic. In March 1837 he moved house. Two months later, his beloved sister-in-law Mary Hogarth died tragically young. The grief he felt caused him to miss the deadlines for both "The Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist" - the only deadlines he ever missed in his entire writing career. Four months later in October, the final issue of Pickwick was published, but the pressure did not let up. In January of 1838, Dickens and his friend Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz) left for Yorkshire to do research for his next novel, "Nicholas Nickleby" which itself started to be serialised two months later. Interestingly it was not Browne who illustrated "Oliver Twist", although he had stepped into the breach before (see my review of "The Pickwick Papers" ) and also went on to illustrate most of Dickens's further novels. It was George Cruikshank, and this is the only novel of Dickens he illustrated... but that is another dramatic story. Also in March, Dickens's daughter Mary (Mamie) was born. In November Dickens revised the monthly parts of Oliver Twist for the 3-volume book version, the first instance where he was published under "Charles Dickens" instead of "Boz". The serial continued until April 1839, alongside serialisation of Nicholas Nickleby. If we think that the novel's structure may not be as we would wish, it is as well to bear in mind the constraints both of the time and of Dickens's own incredibly complicated personal circumstances!Oliver Twist is very much the novel an angry young man would write, seething with fury at the social injustices he observed. It follows hot on the heels of the "Poor Law Amendment Act" of 1834, and the whole novel is a bitter indictment of that Act, even to its satirical subtitle, A Parish Boy's Progress. This Act was a draconian tightening up of the Poor Law, ensuring that poor people were no longer able to live at home and work at outside jobs. The only help from the parish available to them now was to become inmates in the workhouse, which operated on the principle that poverty was the consequence of laziness; the dreadful conditions in the workhouse were intended to inspire the poor to better their own circumstances.Dickens himself in these chapters constantly makes negative remarks about "philosophers" in this context. It is possible he was thinking about the principles of Utilitarianism; a fashionable philosophy of the time, responsible for such things as the high positioning of windows in many Victorian buildings, placed so that children and workers would not be distracted by looking out of them. According to Jeremy Bentham, man's actions were governed by the will to avoid pain and strive for pleasure, so the government's task was to increase the benefits of society by punishing and rewarding people according to their actions.But as Dickens tells us with bitter sarcasm in chapter 2, the workhouse was little more than a prison for the poor. Civil liberties were denied, families were separated, and human dignity was destroyed. The inadequate diet instituted in the workhouse prompted his ironic comment that, "all poor people should have the alternative... of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it."The workhouse functions here as a sign of the moral hypocrisy of the working class. The authorities in charge of the workhouse joke among themselves about feeding minute portions so that the inmates would stay small and thin, thereby needing smaller coffins. They complain about having to pay for burials, again hoping for smaller corpses to bury. Dickens writes a passionate diatribe against both the social conditions and the institutions. His humour is there, but it is a very black biting humour. Sarcasm and irony are on every page; it's a far cry from "The Pickwick Papers". In these scenes set in the workhouse, Dickens makes use of deep satire and hyperbolic statements. Absurd characters and situations are presented as normal; he uses heavy sarcasm, often saying the opposite of what he really means. For example, in describing the men of the parish board, Dickens writes that,"they were very sage, deep, philosophical men" who discover about the workhouse that "the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay...""The other recent legislation which is clearly in Dickens's mind in writing this novel, is the Anatomy Act of 1832. Before 1832, only the bodies of murderers could be legally be used for dissection by medical students. This had been partly responsible for the brisk trade in bodysnatching. But after the Anatomy Act, unclaimed bodies from prisons and workhouses were used. The terrifying thought of having their bodies dissected after death became yet another powerful deterrent to entering the workhouse system. Dickens is clearly thinking of this recent Act in the first few pages, when Oliver's mother's body disappears. The fact that the poor young woman who dies in its opening pages was being dissected while her son was being starved has a grotesque significance.There is quite a marked difference in style when the character of Oliver moves away from the workhouse. The author's voice becomes less acrimonious and bitter. There is more concentration on the story and also more gross exaggeration of the characters for comic effect rather than proselytising. Apparently when Dickens was writing instalments of both "The Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist", he would sit down to write the sardonic early episodes of "Oliver Twist" first, and then "reward" himself with a little light relief of "Pickwick". The change in style probably coincides with the conclusion of "Pickwick".Surprisingly many of the grotesque characters were based on people in real life, who performed similar unbelievably atrocious acts. The character of Fagin, for instance, was modelled on a notorious Jewish fence by the name of Ikey Solomon. Dickens also sited him in a real location, where the notorious eighteenth-century thief Jonathan Wild had his hideout. Its shops were well known for selling silk handkerchiefs bought from pickpockets. Dickens' letters allude to this,"when my handkerchief is gone, that I may see it flaunting with renovated beauty in Field-lane." There's also the ruthless magistrate Mr Fang, who is entirely based on an actual person who could well have been even more severe in reality! In a letter dated June 3, 1837, Dickens wrote to his friend Thomas Haines,"In my next number of Oliver Twist, I must have a magistrate...whose harshness and insolence would render him a fit subject to be "shewn up"...I have...stumbled upon Mr. Laing of Hatton Garden celebrity." Laing was a police magistrate, but was dismissed by the Home Secretary for abuse of his power. Dickens even went so far as to ask Haines, who was an influential police reporter, to smuggle him into the office so he could get an accurate physical description of Laing. It makes the reader wonder whether Mrs Corney, Mrs Sowerberry, and others also have their counterparts in reality. Dickens had previously studied and sketched the office of beadle in "Sketches by Boz", so the harsh hypocritical behaviour of Mr Bumble could well have started with that.Some of the action too is based on real events. For example, when Nancy went to the gaol to enquire after Oliver, she had a conversation with a prisoner who was in there for playing the flute. This sounds very far-fetched. But in November 1835, Dickens had reported on Mr. Laing throwing a muffin-boy in jail "for ringing a muffin-bell in Hatton Garden while Laing's court was sitting." Again the reader wonders if other parts of Dickens's story had some basis in fact. It says a lot for Dickens's prodigious talent that he could take such examples and weave them into such a captivating whole. Sometimes he employs deux et machina. Where the plot seems to be impossible to resolve without a contrived and unexpected intervention, he will create some new event, character or object to surprise his audience, or as a comedic device. For all the readers' willing suspension of disbelief, it sometimes seems clear that Dickens has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out. Dickens is often criticised for his use of coincidence, and he uses deux et machina here to bring the tale of Oliver Twist to a happy ending. We are told that characters whom we have been following know each other, or happen to be related. It does not really seem necessary to "excuse" the use of this device, as it has so many precedents in literature of the Ancient Greeks, and also gives us the happy ending we so much desire. The "goodies" live happily ever after, the "baddies" get an entertaining variety of just desserts. As well as the criticism of "coincidences" that is often levelled at Dickens, one of the main criticisms of Oliver Twist has always been the apparent antisemitism shown in the author's portrayal of Fagin as a "dirty Jew". Fagin is introduced in the first chapters; Dickens often using symbols and descriptions which are normally reserved for the Devil. When we first meet Fagin, we find him roasting some sausages on an open fire, "with a toasting fork in his hand", which is then mentioned twice more. In the next chapter we find Fagin holding a fire-shovel. Also, the term "the merry old gentleman" seems to be a euphemistic term for the Devil.In the original text it is clear that Fagin is a personification of evil, both by his intentions and by his behaviour, "In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils. Having prepared his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer any society to the companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, he was now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken it, and change its hue forever." And in this description he seems barely human,"It seemed just the night when it befitted such a being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal."There is a further interpretation of Fagin. Victorian society placed a lot of value and emphasis on industry, capitalism and individualism. And who embodies this most successfully? Fagin - who operates in the illicit businesses of theft and prostitution! His "philosophy" is that the group's interests are best maintained if every individual looks out for himself, saying,"a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company." This is indeed heavy irony on Dickens's part, and adds to Fagin's multi-layered personality.Apparently Dickens expressed surprise, when the Jewish community immediately complained about the depiction of Fagin. Sadly, in 1837, antisemitism was still rife and ingrained into English society. With all great authors we hope that they will somehow manage to step outside the mores of their time, but maybe we expect too much. Up to a point, Dickens did manage to do that later. When he eventually came to sell his London residence, he sold the lease of Tavistock House to a Jewish family he had befriended, as an attempt to make restitution. "Letters of Charles Dickens 1833-1870" include this sentence in the narrative to 1860,"This winter was the last spent at Tavistock House...He made arrangements for the sale of Tavistock House to Mr Davis, a Jewish gentleman, and he gave up possession of it in September."There is other additional evidence of a rethink. When editing Oliver Twist for the "Charles Dickens edition" of his works in 1846, he substantially revised the work for this single volume, eliminating most references to Fagin as "the Jew." And in his last completed novel, "Our Mutual Friend", (1864) Dickens created Riah, a positive Jewish character. There are not many shades of grey in this highly-coloured melodrama. Of the goodies and baddies it is the "baddies" whom we mostly remember. Even Sikes's dog Bullseye falls into the baddies' camp, "Mr Sikes's dog, having faults of temper in common with his owner, and labouring, perhaps at this moment, under a powerful sense of injury...fixed his teeth in one of the halfboots." By this amusing quip Dickens makes the dog a symbolic emblem of his owner's character. He is vicious, just as Sikes has an animal-like brutality. In fact many of the characters are named according to their vices. There is the vicious magistrate "Mr Fang"."Mrs Mann" who farms the infants sent to her, is named to show that she has none of the maternal instincts Dickens considers necessary for this task. "Mr Bumble" is a greedy, arrogant, bumbling, hypocritical, procrastinator, proposing marriage by these words,"Coals, candles and house-rent free...Oh! Mrs Corney what a angel you are!...Such porochial perfection!""Blathers and Duff" are two fairly incompetent coppers (and incidentally, possibly the earliest example in fiction of police detectives.) "Rose Maylie" echoes the character's association with flowers and springtime, youth and beauty. "Toby Crackit" refers humorously to his chosen profession of breaking into houses. The curmudgeonly "Mr Grimwig" has only a superficial grimness, which can be removed as easily as a wig.But the main character's name of "Oliver Twist" is the most obvious example. Although it was given him by accident, it alludes to the outrageous twists of fortune that he will experience. Yet another connotation comes from an English card game called "pontoon", where a player asks the dealer for cards to try to total exactly 21 points. Originally it was a French gambling game called "vingt-et-un", and favoured by Napoleon, who died in 1821, well before this novel was written. In the English version, the player "asks for more" ie another card, by saying the word, "Twist". Dickens is clearly having a little joke with his readers! Oliver Twist himself isn't a fully rounded character. He is more of a mouthpiece, or a character created to arouse public emotion and anger against the treatment of poor children. The whole novel is a a vehicle of criticism, a social commentary - entertaining but overcoloured and melodramatic. It is very much the sort of thing Dickens would imagine performed on stage.The hyperbole gets a bit much sometimes, and there are sentimental speeches such as this one from Little Dick, written entirely for effect, to pull at our heart-strings,"I heard them tell the doctor I was dying," replied the child with a faint smile. "I am very glad to see you, dear; but don't stop!...I know the doctor must be right, Oliver, because I dream so much of Heaven, and Angels and kind faces that I never see when I am awake. "Kiss me!...Goodb'ye dear! God bless you.""Oliver Twist" is a perfect example of persuasive fiction. It is like a morality play in narrative form, with the author continually instructing his readers about the iniquities of social conditions. But it has the faults of a young man's novel. He has not yet learnt how to tailor his passions to the purpose, creating either characters as a sort of Everyman, or grotesques - the comic characters we love so much.Some of the writing is mawkishly oversentimental. But some episodes are gripping. (view spoiler)[Fagin's desperate and terrified descent into madness when he is about to be hanged, and Sikes's murder of Nancy (hide spoiler)]
I was at Starmark looking around for something I might like to read when I came across this pile of books almost heaped against a wall. Above there was a poster which declared that it being the time of the 200th birth anniversary of Dickens his works were on sale. After all, what better way to honour a great author than sell his books at half price? I had been reading Great Expectations at the time and I picked Oliver Twist as the next title in my Dickens’ fest.Oliver Twist is the story of an orphan of the same name and his rise from an unwanted, unloved half-starved child to a boy with family and people to care and look after him. Born in a parish sick house to a mother who was not married Oliver was marked out from birth to be of bad character(for in those days London thought vice and poverty to be mutually to go hand in hand). From the orphanage to the workhouse Oliver is ill treated and starved. One day gripped by hunger the workhouse boys decide that they can bear the hunger no longer. So they draw lots and it falls upon Oliver to go and ask for more food. This act of ‘mutiny’ shocks the parish and Oliver is marked out as a messenger of the devil himself. Apprenticed to a coffin maker whose wife and assistant seem intent on bullying him Oliver soon runs away from home in order to make his fortune and in search of a better life. The novel is mainly about Oliver’s adventures in the city and the people he comes across there.Dickens’ narration in this book is filled with dark humour and sarcasm. He mocks the upper strata of the London society in all their ‘kindness’ and ‘graciousness’. His sentences however are long and winding and seem to go on forever and often end just where they had started, which I am afraid may put off readers(like me) who are not used to it. Dickens’ characters are almost all black and white with characters like Mr.Brownlow, Rose, Harry and Oliver who cannot perceive evil and those like Fagin, Sikes, Noah and Monks who cannot perceive good. There are few who can perceive both and have more than one side to them.There are mostly two major female characters in Oliver Twist, Nancy and Rose. Rose is the ideal Victorian lady. She is pure, innocent, kind, gentle and most importantly blond; she loves animals and children and is soft spoken and cries for the slightest reasons. In short, the ideal wife. She suffers from fevers but never dies as a result and she is unambitious. Her perfection itself becomes a flaw for people can neither identify with nor are interested in someone who resembles a cardboard cut out. Her qualities may have been highly regarded in Dickens’ time but today she would be slighted for these same qualities. Not the kindness or the gentle behaviour but the lack of any ambition, utter dependence upon the male characters, lack of bravery and sense of adventure. Even her admirer, Harry, is simple and honest and unambitious and is content to move to the village to become a clergy man. Oliver is sweet and endearing and always ever so trusting and intent on doing what is right. It seems unnatural that even after being ill treated and starved he should never stray from the path of goodness. He hardly grows throughout the story and unlike David Copperfield or Pip Gargery he remains the same affable, adorable and sweet boy he was at the very beginning of the book.Nancy is the only character I have so much trouble with. I really, really want to like her. She is daring, brave, ingenious and resourceful. She defies her master and does what she knows is right even at the cost of her own life. She does not take money for helping Oliver and takes pride in doing so. And yet she doesn’t take her chance of leaving her old life behind. She stays for a man like Sikes. I never understood why she did that. Her loyalty to Fagin and his gang is…both good and bad. Good because she does not turn her back on those who were by her side for so long and bad because of the bigger picture.Perhaps the greatest undoing of Oliver Twist is the fact that despite being a biting commentary on the cruelty and failure of the charity workers and the helplessness of the poorer section of London the only reason Oliver Twist makes any progress in life is not because he had worked hard and risen above his social status but because he had hidden roots among the middle class of London. Dickens’ portrayal of the orphans and the poorer section of London is heart breaking. The state of the lower class was pitiable and I cried quite a few times while reading the description of Oliver’s life in the parish. When it comes to the authorities Dickens is rather unforgiving for most of them are nothing but monsters without any redeeming qualities.The names of his characters are always so amusing. Oliver’s last name signifies the change in his life. Rose’s name shows what she symbolizes, in short, a pure flower. Toby, who cracks safes, has the last name Crackit. Bumble reminds me of a bumbling fool and Noah Claypole assumes the name of Bolter which is just what he is as he spills the beans on Fagin and his gang and then gets off scot free.The books is definitely a good read.
What do You think about Oliver Twist (2015)?
I have in my 37 years of life avoided reading Charles Dickens. My reason: after having suffered through trying to read the so-called English literature of his era--think Thomas Harding, Emile Bronte and Mary Shelly--I figured Dickens would be no better. For some reason I can’t now recollect, I decided to give Dickens a try. I chose Oliver Twist. And was immediately hooked. Far from the boring narrative one finds the works of the other English writers I've already mentioned, Dickens has a very personable, simple, attractive writing style.As its title suggests, the book itself is about Oliver Twist. He's an orphan who, constantly abused, finally runs away and goes to London for there he figures he'll never be found. During his trip to that city, he meets a youth of perhaps thirteen years who calls himself the Artful Dodger. He's a pick pocket, and he brings poor Oliver into a den of thieves, one headed by a fence named Fagin. Here is a character of very bad reputation. Alas, he also demonstrates Dickens’ obvious anti-Semitism. Fagin represents a caricature of all “bad” Jews. Despite this flaw, Dickens nonetheless makes him a compelling villain. His other primary rogue, Bill Sikes the housebreaker, is even more dangerous and more terrifying.Poor Oliver is soon used as a decoy while the Artful Dodger and his fellow pickpocket, Charley Bates, steal from a gentleman looking at books at a bookstand. Oliver is caught, taken to the magistrate, then befriended by the very man who thought Oliver had picked his pocket: Mr. Brownlow. From here Oliver’s adventures for the most part recall the terrible things that happen to the poor boy: he’s kidnapped, compelled to be a house breaker, and has a variety of other problems. Along the way he learns that not all the adults in the world are as compassionless as those who ran the Parish orphanage from whence he came.This book is more than a compelling tale: it is biting social commentary, attacking the terrible conditions that the English masses had to endure in the first half of the 19th century; it is especially critical of the unfair Poor Law. England at that time was in essence what the free market advocates want in America to be today: they want no government interference in business nor the government to manage anyone’s lives’ let the market to take care of it! Thus an orphanage isn’t a place where you keep children until they can be adopted or come of age, it’s a place where you work the them to turn a profit. Oddly, this tale rings very true to our society today, but even if you have no interest whatsoever in society in general and politics and economics in particular, it’s nonetheless a wonderful tale well worth reading.
—Mark
I looooooooved this book. Another Dickens...another favorite. 'Please, sir, I want some more.' Jane Austen and Charles Dickens have been dueling inside my WOW center for some time in a titanic, see-saw struggle for the title of greatest word-smither/story-crafter in all of English literature. Ms Austen previously caused heart-palpitations and a slew of gasms with Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility which left me spent like a cheap nickel. However, Sir Dickens, being a slick, wily devil responded in kind with A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, a pair of wonderfully addictive, tingle causing joy blasts full of jaw-drops and breezy elegance. Where this battle of master word charmers will end….I could really care less because I’m sporting a complete happy going through their respective catalogs with a perma-smile on my face. Next up on the parade of mouth-watering, phrase turning feasts is The Adventures of Oliver Twist which is terrific on several levels. In relating the tragic (but ultimately rewarding) life of Oliver Twist, Dickens is at his most Austenesque as he employs with great effect biting sarcasm and dry, dark humor to scathingly satire the English Poor Laws of the 1830s. Of the novels I’ve read by Dickens, this is him at his most “socially conscious” and he strategically uses Oliver’s biography to harshly spotlight the greed, hypocrisy and let’s just say it…evil…of the society that organized and profited by the work house system of the middle 19th century. So they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they,) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. We follow Oliver beginning with his difficult birth that killed his mother and almost cost the young lad his life as well. [T]here was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration- a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence… From there we journey with the child as he is dumped into a workhouse where his early life goes from bad to horrendously shitty as he’s subjected to a systematic process of neglect, physical brutality and starvation along with the other children residing there. Here is a passage from Chapter 2 that I think perfectly encapsulates the subtly sarcastic style Dickens employs to address his subject matter. The parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be ‘farmed,’ or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food, or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher. Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rapacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died, four and twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for the experimental philosopher of the female to whose care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of her system; for at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this. I love the way Dickens can describe callous starvation and casual murder of children for nothing more than greed in such a way that I was actually chuckling because of his lusciously humorous phrasing. This man could write.Eventually, Oliver’s life takes another turn from horrendously shitty to mega-painful-chunks-of-misery-filled-crap when he has the temerity to utter the famous words, “Please, sir, I want some more." He gets more…more beatings, more starvation,more verbal abuse,more neglect,…and ultimately finds himself alone on the streets with no means of survival. There, Oliver finds himself sucked into a life of petty criminality under the tutelage of “Fagin the Jew” who I thought was one of the most compelling Dickens characters ever.**[**Note: I know there is a lot of controversy about the portrayal of Fagin being one of the most egregious cases of anti-Semitism in classic literature. I think the criticism is fair, but I also don’t think (based on what I’ve read) that Dickens’ had any malicious intent. It is what it is and everyone can make their own decision on that point.] I thought the character of Fagin was fascinating and his signature phrase my dear (which he uses in almost every sentence) is still popping into my head more than a week after finishing the novel. Fagin, while irredeemably evil and in some ways a criminal caricature, Dickens draws him with such flair imbues him with a dimension and essence that I found very compelling. His psychology, his calculating intelligence and his soft words masking despicable actions is deftly laid out. At times, I almost got the impression that Fagin was intended to represent “the devil himself” with the way Dickens focuses on his corrupting influence. In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils; and, having prepared his mind by solitude and gloom to prefer any society to the companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, was now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken it and change its hue for ever. On one level, the life of Oliver Twist is one of the harshest, most depressingly sad tales ever put to paper. In lesser hands, the heartache and forlornness of Oliver’s birth and tragic early life could have swallowed up the story and made the book a real chore to get through. Good news…these are not lesser hands.Dickens writing is so melodic that the narrative glides over the horror at a safe middle-distance, allowing us to observe and absorb the surroundings without drowning in the pain that Dickens describes. I thought it was masterful. Intimate yet detached. Eventually, the plot takes a mysterious turn as a shadowy figure arrives on the scene who has a connection to Oliver and his past that is slowly revealed over the last half of the story. All of this leads to a marvelous ending that makes the rest of the story far more enjoyable in retrospect…sometimes positive, warm and fuzzy resolutions are exactly what a story needs. Dickens prose is buttery smooth while his mocking humor is cheddar sharp. His balance is outstanding and his ability to poke fun at his readers’ society while avoiding making the reader themselves feel like a target is brilliant. I had such a wonderful time reading this that I am left wondering why everyone doesn’t love Dickens as much as I do. 5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!Okay, Ms. Austen…your turn again.
—Stephen
I hate Oliver Twist. AND I hate Oliver Twist. I can stand neither the character nor the book. One thing that one is taught over and over again in literature classes and in writing classes is that characters must change, that protagonists must be organic and developing, not round. So what's the deal with Oliver? He starts as a twit, and ends as a twit. I know that the point is how his purity is untouched by the gangrenous society in which he is enveloped, but... But books like this, and especially characters like this, drive me up the wall. So that's why I made the shelf on which I have placed this.
—Rafe
