Oliver Twist is a critique of the society in which Charles Dickens lived. The book directly criticized the Poor Laws and attempted to inspire middle- and upper-class readers to improve the intolerable conditions in which Dickens himself had been raised. Through the novel's unforgettable characters, Dickens humanized a marginalized social class, shedding light on the dark nature of their lives. In descriptions of London's workhouses and slums, Dickens forced his readers to recognize the squalid living conditions of the poor. Finally, Dickens uses the plot of Oliver Twist to reveal the flaws in a system that kept the poor trapped in a seemingly permanent state of misery. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayCharles Dickens learned about the dark and difficult lives of the poor through his own childhood experience. This experiential knowledge placed him in the ideal position to become an advocate for the poor years later via Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and other well-known novels. According to the article "Bentham, Dickens and the Uses of the Workhouse", the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 attempted to make poverty alleviation entirely dependent on stay in the workhouse, thereby distinguishing between the poor and the poor. more deserving people who were willing to work and the more lazy and unworthy people (Stokes 711). Unfortunately, even those who worked in factories and workshops lived in very difficult conditions. The preface to the Norton critical edition of Oliver Twist notes that "the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834... like many 'social reforms,' made the living conditions of the poor worse than they had been." ever been and has made life even more difficult for the working poor. for help” (Kaplan vi). The workshops were deliberately made very miserable by employing workshop masters to treat the workers very harshly. The Dickens family was in such dire straits that young Charles fell victim to child labor at the age of twelve. The long, tiring days he spent at the workhouse while his father was in debtors' prison left a lasting impression on Dickens that haunted him throughout his adult life and served as the inspiration for its efforts to reform working conditions. Peter Stokes says, “As a protest against the law, Dickens published Oliver Twist…” (711). While the misfortune of being poor was often seen as a natural and unchangeable situation, Dickens believed that poverty did not have to be permanent. Thus, "Oliver Twist is the first and perhaps most powerful work of fiction that attempts to draw the attention of those who read such books to the misery that is the daily life of a large number of people taken in generational cycles of poverty and despair and in the selfishness and stupidity of government and its agencies” (Kaplan iv). By blending fact and fiction in Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens creates a masterpiece novel that combines a gripping story with an effective social and political agenda. One of the most notable features of Oliver Twist is the way Dickens shapes stereotypical members of the lower classes. social classes into authentic and sensitive people. Orphans, prostitutes, and juvenile delinquents make up some of the most important characters in Oliver Twist. The article “Social and Political Issues” states that “in all his fiction, there was purpose in his portraits of the poor” (Engel 495). George Gissing statesthat Oliver Twist had two moral goals: the first being to expose the injustice of the Poor Law Act and the second to accurately depict the lives of thieves in London. These two views went hand in hand for Dickens, who believed that the high crime rate was a direct consequence of the Poor Law system (421). Even though the social outcasts in Oliver Twist are not all presented in a glamorous manner, Dickens brings a certain humanity to these characters that makes them unforgettable. Oliver, the protagonist of Oliver Twist, is the most consistent and immutable from all the other characters in the story. He has a heart that is implacably pure and virtually immune to the influences of his environment. With such a strong and unyielding spirit, it is interesting that Oliver happens to be an orphan, the scourge of society. When Oliver's mother died just minutes after his birth, he "was given a badge and a ticket, and immediately fell into her place - a parish child - the orphan of an almshouse - the humble drudgery half-starved – to be handcuffed and tossed around the world. – despised by all and pitying none” (Dickens 19). As a young child with little control over his destiny, Oliver is very much at the mercy of those around him, “like an object that is picked up, manipulated and placed in place rather than an individual who controls his own movement” (Duffy 405). The unfortunate circumstances of Oliver's life make him utterly pitiful. When we meet Oliver in chapter two, he is nine years old, raised without the affection of a mother or any other form of family. He longs to connect with others, as Dickens reveals Oliver's thoughts about leaving for another workhouse: "Wretched as were the little companions in misery whom he left behind, they were the only ones friends he ever knew; and a feeling of loneliness in the wide world sank into his heart for the first time” (Dickens 24). Throughout the novel, the forces of good and evil seem to fight over Oliver's fate, but "what threatens Oliver seems more powerful and more real than what saves him" (Kaplan iv). For example, it is certainly fortunate that Oliver meets Mr. Brownlow, a meeting that triggers the discovery of Oliver's true identity. However, whatever rare goodwill Oliver receives from kind strangers is relentlessly challenged by the plans of Fagin, Sikes, and Monks, who are determined to prevent Oliver from living a better life than that of a criminal. ordinary. By creating Oliver, the hero of the story, as an orphan, Dickens insisted that his readers consider the miserable lives these children endured. A minor orphan character is little Dick, Oliver's dearest friend. Although he plays a very small role in the story, his character serves to strike another blow against the notion of orphans as a troublesome blight on society. In his parting words to Oliver, Dick states that he will not be happy until his own death leads him to a better place. He says: “I dream so much about heaven and angels; and kind faces that I never see when I am awake” (Dickens 59). The relationship between Dick and Oliver is perhaps the purest and most beautiful depiction of love in all of history, as two young boys who have never been shown their love still love each other. Oliver remembers Dick's blessing on him all his life, and Dick's dying wish is to let Oliver know that "I was glad to die when I was very young because, perhaps, if I had lived to be a man and had grown old, my my little sister, who is in Heaven, could forget me or not look like me, and it would be so much happier if we were both there as children together” (121). Although it does not appear ingood place in the novel, Dick makes the reader understand that this orphan is the victim of a very unlucky hand of fate and that he was a better child than his world deserved. While the choice of an orphan as the novel's hero may be unconventional, the supporting character Nancy, the ruined mistress of the despicable Bill Sikes, is even more surprising. She is described as having "free and pleasant manners" (Dickens 70) and a rather disheveled appearance, indirectly identifying her as a prostitute. According to Robert R. Garnett, "prostitution flourished in the growing towns of Britain...offering a sinister and base lure of life" (497) and was one of the few means by which a destitute young woman could earn her keep. life. From Nancy's own words, we learn that she was once one of Fagin's subjects, trained in the art of making a living off the streets. Nancy exclaims to Fagin: “This is my life; and the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home; and you are the wretch who led me to them long ago; and it will keep me there, day and night, day and night, until I die” (Dickens 116). In the same way that Oliver slightly regrets leaving behind the kids who were his friends at the workshop, Nancy cannot walk away from her life of crime and abuse, even when she recognizes the depravity of its position. Nancy realizes that "however vile these plans were, however desperate their initiators, and however bitter her feelings towards the Jew, who had dragged her, step by step, deeper and deeper into an abyss of crime and misery, from which there is no escape; Yet there were times when, even towards him, she felt a certain relaxation... but these were only mere wanderings of a mind incapable of completely detaching itself from its former companions and associations... she had refused to take refuge against all the guilt and misery that surrounded him. (296). Despite Nancy's past associations, profession, or actions, she becomes approachable and sympathetic in her simple inability to break free from the only life she has ever known. Most importantly, Nancy becomes Oliver's savior and the heroine of the novel when she sacrifices her own life so that Oliver can have a better one. William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair, once said of Nancy, "No one has read this remarkable story of Oliver Twist without being interested in poor Nancy and her murderer" (Thackeray 408). Richard Ford further poses the question of what kind of woman Nancy might have been if she had been born under better circumstances (Ford 407). Thackeray and Ford's words testify to Dickens's success in making the character Nancy a woman with a name and a heart, instead of just a hated prostitute, prowling the dirty streets of London. The London of Oliver Twist is not the big city where royalty lives and progress thrives like in other stories. It's dark and disturbing, a breeding ground for scum and villainy. Young Oliver, who has lived in and around horrible places all his life, wonders, "A place dirtier or more miserable than he had ever seen." The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was permeated with dirty odors” (Dickens 64). It's the kind of place no respectable person would ever want to be seen in, and yet these same people had no qualms about hiding those they were ashamed of in such an environment. One would expect characters such as Fagin and Sikes to appear in such a place and feel quite at home there. Dickens' talented command of the English language allowed him to vividly portray the nastiness of London's most unsavory neighborhoods.His descriptions of what Oliver sees conjure up images of vermin rather than people: "Children...creeping in and out of the doors or shouting from within...the lower classes of Irish arguing fiercely...where the Drunk men and women were positively wallowing in filth” (Dickens 64). The novel, like the audience's point of view, initially implies that Oliver is simply wandering through a bad part of town, but Dickens masterfully notes later in the novel that "midnight had fallen on the crowded city." The palace, the cellar, the prison, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness: the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child: midnight was upon them all” (305 ). In describing London in this way, Dickens quietly asserts that for villains like Fagin or gentlemen like Mr. Brownlow, London remains essentially one place, perceived inaccurately if the manors and great houses are not depicted along with the slums and the bars. Dickens understood that London as a whole comprised the least desirable and the most fashionable areas of the city. Likewise, humanity is made up of both rich and poor, good and evil, but alienating the undesirables only neglects the problem rather than solving it. Dickens's description of the London slums forced his readers to recognize the conditions they had neglected right under their noses. The conditions in London that bred crime and wickedness were attacked in Oliver Twist, but Dickens took his criticisms far beyond the borders of London. According to Oliver, London was certainly the most horrible place he had ever seen, but it was not the only reprehensible place in which Oliver had resided. Very early on, Oliver had to be transferred from the workhouse where he was born to a secondary workhouse where "twenty or thirty young delinquents against the poor laws rolled on the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too few clothes. (20). Mortality rates in the workhouses were appalling, and Dickens revealed in chapter two the atrocious neglect the orphans suffered at the hands of churchwardens and overseers: "Even when a child managed to exist on the smallest possible part of the lowest possible food, this happened in a perverse way in eight and a half cases out of ten, either because she fell ill from want and cold, or because she fell into the fire through negligence , either that she was half-suffocated by accident… or that she died inadvertently when it happened to be laundry” (20). The horrors of Oliver's youth are probably drawn from Dickens's own memories in the workshop. Steven Marcus writes that in Oliver Twist, “Dickens returned to his earliest and most intense depictions of the crisis of his early childhood…” (Marcus 494). Dickens's memories of the workshop were particularly sensitive to him, and his interest in the poor from this time on was fervent and abiding (Engel 495). Young Charles was traumatized by his time at the workhouse, but the older and wiser Dickens used his experience as a tool to expose the terror that children endure in such places. In the complex plot of Oliver Twist, a reader cannot deny the discrimination practiced against children. Oliver relies at all times solely on his position as an orphan. From the moment Oliver was born and was quickly branded an orphan, the author acknowledges that the child had good reason to cry loudly because of his situation. No matter how hard Oliver tries or what misunderstanding he finds himself in the middle of, thepeople who care for his future seem determined to keep this rascal in his rightful position and teach him to be grateful for their generosity in sending him. in a workhouse where he had food and shelter. Such a job would ensure that the little kid who had the courage to impose his existence on the world would remain forever in his place, while amply convincing the board of directors of his own liberality and relieving him of any subsequent responsibility. with regard to the child. a helpless Oliver from the beginning of the novel reflects the absolute insensitivity to the plight of the poor. When Oliver is questioned by the board, one member condescendingly asks Oliver to state that he has no father or mother. The admission of the fact combined with the intimidation of the whole ordeal causes Oliver to burst into tears, prompting the gentleman to ask incredulously, "Why are you crying?" (Dickens 25). Although the men who are looking after Oliver's future have at least enough sense not to learn it from the chimney sweep Mr. Gamfield, it took the deaths of three or four other boys for them to come to the conclusion that Oliver needs another form of work. None of their plans for the boy involve a decent education or any degree of education, which would further cement his place in the lower class. The argument that Dickens seems to be making in the early chapters of the novel is that Oliver's chances of surviving the often deadly occupations to which the board or beadle destines him are relatively few. The determination against him also certainly increases the likelihood that he will die young; the gentleman in the white vest declares that Oliver will be hanged for his grave offense of having asked for more porridge. But the powers that be do not express real concern because it would give them one less mouth to feed and, in the event of the child's death, they can console themselves by saying that they tried to help him by providing him with employment. the men on the board of directors, the grumpy old women who run the workshops or the beadle who treats Oliver with such disdain. When Olivier is accused of stealing a handkerchief and is chased, a passerby declares in response to the cry to give him air, that he does not deserve it (74). Soon after, the magistrate readily believes that Oliver is the offender, but is reluctant to allow Mr. Brownlow to doubt Oliver's guilt. When Oliver finally encounters the kindness of Mr. Brownlow, Brownlow's friend Mr. Grimwig has a strong opinion against Oliver on no particular basis, and quickly accuses Oliver of leaving orange peels on the streets in the express purpose of causing someone's death (100). With some effort, "Grimwig was strongly willing to admit that Oliver's appearance and manner were unusually pleasant, but he had a strong appetite for contradiction" (101), insisting that appearances aside, Oliver couldn't be completely blameless. He states that “the boy has a new garment on his back; a set of precious books under my arm; and a five pound note in his pocket. He will join his old friends the thieves; and I laugh at you” (103). When circumstances prevent Oliver from returning, Grimwig immediately assumes the worst. Throughout the novel, Oliver never acts maliciously towards anyone except when excessively provoked, and never shows signs of rebellion, malice, or mischief. On the contrary, despite Oliver's constant immersion in a culture of deception and lies, "pushed as he is in this miserable crowd, he is preserved from the vice of its pollution" (Forster 401). Oliver proves to be a good and docile boy on several occasions, but,.