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Charles Dickens: a writer and a gentleman. Oliver Twist






Charles Dickens was born in 1812. He lived in the south of England when he was a little boy. His father worked in an office. He was a very clever man, but he was very poor. Charles had many brothers and sisters, but he did not often play with them. His father had many books and Charles liked to read them. He learned to read very early. When Charles was 10 years old, his family went to London. There his father got into debt (as he had little money) and then into debtor's prison. So, little Charles began to work when he was ten. That was the beginning of Charles' hard life.

He worked at a small factory in London, pasting labels on blacking bottles. He had to work in a dirty room with no windows. He did not like his work, but he had to work at the factory for two years. Then he went to school for three years, but he did not learn much at school. He learned much at home, from his father and from other clever people. Later he worked as a reporter to the Parliament and became a writer of short stories. In 1837 he published his first novel " The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club". And the young reporter became a famous writer. Then he published novel after novel - " Oliver Twist", " Dombey and Son", " David Copperfield" and many other good books.

His books are very interesting; they tell us about the hard life of the poor people in England of that time. When we read his books, we sometimes laugh, but we often want to cry. Charles Dickens died in 1870. He is one of the greatest novelists in the English literature. Dickens lived more than a hundred years ago, but people in the whole world like to read his books today, because in his books he showed a real world and people of Victorian England.

One of Dickens’ most enduringly popular stories is Oliver Twist, an early work published 1837-8. Like many of his later novels, its central theme is the hardship faced by the dispossessed and those of the outside of ‘polite’ society. Oliver himself is born in a workhouse and treated cruelly there as was the norm at the time for pauper children, in particular by Bumble, a parish council official or ‘beadle’. The story follows Oliver as he escapes the workhouse and runs away to London. Here he receives an education in villainy from the criminal gang of Fagin that includes the brutal thief Bill Sikes, the famous ‘Artful Dodger’ and Nancy, Bill’s whore. Oliver is rescued by the intervention of a benefactor — Mr. Brownlow — but the mysterious Monks gets the gang to kidnap the boy again. Nancy intervenes but is murdered viciously by Sikes after she has showed some redeeming qualities and has discovered Monk’s sinister intention. The story closes happily and with justice for Bumble and the cruel Monks who has hidden the truth of Oliver’s parentage out of malice. Accusations were made that the book glamorized crime (like the ‘Newgate Group’ of the period) but Dickens wisely disassociated himself from criminal romances. His achievement was in fact in presenting the underworld and problems of poverty to the well-off in a way rarely attempted previously.

Oliver Twist was written as a protest against Poor Low. The poor low didn’t allow homeless people to live in the streets. Dickens put all his hopes in the good qualities of human nature.

A major concern of Oliver Twist is the question of whether a bad environment can irrevocably poison someone’s character and soul. Nancy. As a child of the streets, Nancy has been a thief and drinks to excess. The narrator’s reference to her “free and agreeable... manners” indicates that she is a prostitute. She sacrifices her own life in order to protect Oliver. Nancy’s moral complexity is unique among the major characters in Oliver Twist. Nancy is capable of both good and evil.


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