a brief comment on oliver twist

A BRIEF(摘要） COMMENT（评语） ON OLIVER TWIST

Name: Yu Chi (于池)

Major: English Education (英语教育) Grade: 02.3

College: College of Foreign Languages Date: May 15, 2006

Tutor: Zhang Xinyu (张新宇)

Abstract: This thesis is going to give a brief comment on Oliver Twist. Oliver Twist is the story about a young orphan boy who reflects the life of poverty in England in the 1830s. It is one of the most famous works of Charles Dickens’.

According to the analysis of the main characters this thesis portrays the power of love, hate, greed, and revenge and how each can affect people involved. It also has the analysis of the plots and themes of Oliver Twist. What this story says about reality is that in today’s society, it does not matter whether you are rich or poor, educated or not, most competent human beings possess the ability to judge right from wrong and therefore free to make whatever choices in their lives they wish to be provided through, that they can live with the consequence of their decisions.

This thesis also analyzes the writing styles. Dickens’s style is marked by a kind of literary obesity that is displeasing to some modern tastes. This thesis shows in many ways that the life was more unhurried and deliberate in the early-nineteenth century than it is now. The immediate popularity of Dickens’s works bears witness to the soundness of his literary judgment.

Key words: Oliver Twist kindness analysis violence

Contents

Ⅰ. Introduction …………………………………………………………….1 Ⅱ. Characters analysis ……………………………………………………..2 Ⅲ. Analysis of the plots ……………………………………………………7

Ⅳ. Analysis of the main themes ……………………………………………..7 A. Main themes ………………………………………………………….7 B. Minor themes ………………………………………………………..10 Ⅴ. Characteristics of the writing styles …………………………………..15 A. Individual language …………………………………………………15 B. Sympathetic imagination ……………………………………………16 Ⅵ. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………20

Notes ………………………………………………………………………22 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………23

A Brief Comment on Oliver Twist

Ⅰ. Introduction

Oliver Twist, one of the most famous works of Charles Dickens’s, is a novel reflecting the tragic fact of the life in Britain in 18th century. Charles Dickens was born in a poor family and wrote this novel in his twenties with a view to reveal the ugly masks of those cruel criminals and to expose the horror and violence hidden underneath the narrow and dirty street in London.

In considering Dickens, as we almost consider him, as a man of rich originality, we may possibly miss the force which he drew even his original energy. It is not well for man to be alone. We, in the modern world, are ready enough to admit that when it is applied to some problem of monasticism or of an ecstatic life. But we will not admit that our modern artistic claim to absolute originality as the ascetic. And the men of vivid vigor in literature, the men such as Dickens, have generally displayed a large sociability towards the society of letter, always expressed in the happy pursuit of pre-existent themes.

The hero of this novel was Oliver Twist, an orphan, who was thrown into a world full of poverty and crime. He suffered enormous pain, such as hunger, thirst, beating and abuse. While reading the tragic experience of the little Oliver, I was shocked by his suffering. I felt for the poor boy, but at the same time I detested the evil Fagin and the brutal Bill. To my relief, as written in all the best stories, the goodness eventually conquered devil and Oliver lived a happy life in the end.

How can such a little boy had already suffered oppressive affliction remain pure in body and mind? The reason is the nature of goodness. I think it is the most important information implied in the novel by Dickens, he believed that goodness could conquer every difficulty. Although I do not think goodness is omnipotent, yet I do believe that those who are kind-hearted live more happily than those who are evil-minded.

In Dickens, however, this element of the original foundations on which he worked is quite especially difficult to determine. This is partly due to the fact that for the present reading public he

is practically the only one of his long mine that is read at all.

He sums up Smollett and Goldmith, but he also destroys them. This one giant, being closest to us, cuts off from our view even the giants that begat him. But much more is this difficulty due to the fact that Dickens mixed up with the old material, material so subtly modern, so made of the French Revolution, that the whole is transformed. If we want the best example of this, the best is Oliver Twist.

Ⅱ.Characters Analysis

Oliver Twist is an orphan endowed with a natural goodness and an instinct for survival, is the protagonist of the novel who fights against the forces of evil to establish his identity in a moral world. Dickens has created Oliver through his experiences as a child and his intuitive imagination. He has projected his protagonist as a sensitive child possessed with natural charm, innocence, and strength of character. He shows Oliver as a representative orphan surrounded by ruthless powers. Oliver talks less but observes and perceives more. He shows his helplessness when he is unjustly punished and denied his rights. However, when tested by the force of circumstances, he displays an inner strength to protect himself. Even when he is surrounded by evil forces, he remains unaffected. His natural goodness and instinct for survival help him to overcome the odds of life. Thus he establishes himself in the world of respectable people who cherish the values of honesty and integrity.

As the child hero of a melodramatic novel of social protest, Oliver Twist is meant to appeal more to our sentiments than to our literary sensibilities. On many levels, Oliver is not a believable character, because although he is raised in corrupt surroundings, his purity and virtue are absolute. Throughout the novel, Dickens uses Oliver’s character to challenge the Victorian idea that paupers and criminals are already evil at birth, arguing instead that a corrupt environment is the source of vice. At the same time, Oliver’s incorruptibility undermines some of Dickens’s assertions. Oliver is shocked and horrified when he sees the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates pick a stranger’s pocket and again when he is forced to participate in a burglary. Oliver’s moral scruples about the sanctity of property seem inborn in him, just as Dickens’s opponents thought that corruption is inborn in poor people. Furthermore, other pauper children use rough Cockney slang, but Oliver, oddly enough, speaks in proper King’s English. His grammatical fastidiousness is also inexplicable, as Oliver presumably is not well educated. Even when he is abused and manipulated, Oliver does not become angry or indignant. When Sikes and Crackit force him to assist in a robbery, Oliver merely begs to be allowed to “run away and die in the fields.”1 Oliver does not present a complex picture of a person torn between good and evil—instead, he is goodness incarnate.

Even if we might feel that Dickens’s social criticism would have been more effective if he had focused on a more complex poor character, like the Artful Dodger or Nancy, the audience for whom Dickens was writing might not have been receptive to such a portrayal. Dickens’s Victorian middle-class readers were likely to hold opinions on the poor that were only a little less extreme than those expressed by Mr. Bumble, the beadle who treats paupers with great cruelty. In fact, Oliver Twist was criticized for portraying thieves and prostitutes at all.

Given the strict morals of Dickens’s audience, it may have seemed necessary for him to make Oliver a saint like figure. Because Oliver appealed to Victorian readers’ sentiments, his story may have stood a better chance of effectively challenging their prejudices.

Nancy for us must be the weakest character. Tapped between wanting to help Oliver evade Fagin’s

exploitation and her dedicated love for Sikes, she fails to survive to the end as she is convicted and ironically murdered by her own husband. Sikes is a brutal and abusive man. But there is a great need for this secondary character in the story; she is the only hope of salvation for Oliver. Without her, Oliver may have never had the chance to grow up in a loving home and learn to be proper in his actions and pure in the soul. Even though her un- understandable love for Sikes is honest most of the time, her own soul held an even greater devotion to Oliver, for she gets her own husband drunk and comes to Oliver’s rescuer. Nancy sees in Oliver the innocence of her own childhood being robbed by Fagin’s deceiving malpractice. Nancy provides the story with a second chance for Oliver into a proper, honest world. It costs her, her life, but she prospers in helping Oliver as well as doing a lot of justice for society. Able to save Oliver from evil and putting evil itself in prison, Nancy triumphs above all her devilish acquaintances and is the pivoting point of Oliver’s return to safety. Not only as a way to introduce new plots in the tale, but as well as the theme’s greatest support, she is a genial character that could have only been created after much planning and thought.

Nancy is a desperate fallen woman with a tender heart, serves Sikes with devotion and helps Oliver in establishing his identity. A major concern of Oliver Twist is the question of whether a bad environment can irrevocably poison someone’s character and soul. As the novel progresses, the character who best illustrates the contradictory issues brought up by that question is 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”2 indicates that she is a prostitute. She is immersed in the vices condemned by her society, but she also commits perhaps the noblest act in the novel when she sacrifices her own life in order to protect Oliver. Nancy’s moral complexity is unique among the major characters in Oliver Twist. The novel is full of characters who are all good and can barely comprehend evil, such as Oliver, Rose, and Brownlow; and characters who are all evil and can barely comprehend well, such as Fagin, Sikes, and Monks. Her ultimate choice to do good at a great personal cost is a strong argument in favor of the incorruptibility of basic goodness, no matter how many environmental obstacles it may face.

Fagin is a stereotyped portrait of a Jew; he is lord of the underworld, wily and greedy and feels delighted to lure young men into his profession. Although Dickens denied that anti-Semitism had influenced his portrait of Fagin, the Jewish thief’s characterization does seem to owe much to ethnic stereotypes. He is ugly, simpering, miserly, and avaricious. Constant references to him as “the Jew” seem to indicate that his negative traits are intimately connected to his ethnic identity. However, Fagin is more than a statement of ethnic prejudice. He is a richly drawn, resonant embodiment of terrifying villainy. At times, he seems like a child’s distorted vision of pure evil. Fagin is described as a “loathsome reptile” 3 and as having “fangs such as should have been a dog’s or rat’s.” 4 Other characters occasionally refer to him as “the old one,” a popular nickname for the devil. Twice, in Chapter 9 and again in Chapter 34, Oliver wakes up to find Fagin nearby. Oliver encounters him in the hazy zone between sleep and waking, at the precise time when dreams and nightmares are born from “the mere silent presence of some external object.”5 Indeed, Fagin is meant to inspire nightmares in child and adult readers alike. The gallows, and the fear they inspire in Fagin, are a specter even more horrifying to contemplate than Fagin himself. Ⅲ. Analysis of the Plots

Oliver Twist reflects the tragic fact of the life in British in 18th century. The author who himself was born a poor family wrote in his twenties centuries with a view to reveal the ugly masks of

those cruel criminal and to expose the horror and violent hidden underneath the narrow and dirty streets in London.

The plot of a novel is a synthesis of all elements that make up the material. It is not the same as the story, although story is an essential component of plot. The story provides the framework in the form of a sequence of events related by the forces that cause them to take place.

Oliver Twist is a typical Dickens novel, fashioned around a core of tangled intrigue that brings together a large number of people. These characters are of varied origins and diverse backgrounds. On the surface, it would seem unlikely that their paths should ever cross, but they are all inexorably drawn into the same web of circumstances. Dickens suggests that the lives of people of all stations may become intertwined. No one, he says, is safe from being influenced by the actions of others—possibly even completes strangers. The resulting complications and their unraveling contribute a large measure of mystery and suspense. Writers and critics sometimes use the term denouement in connection with the resolution of a story. The French word simply means an unknotting or an unscrambling of a jumble of twine. See how easily that relates to the complex interactions of a Dickens story.

The characteristic distinguishing ingredients of the plots are conflict and resolution. In Oliver Twist, there are dual conflicts: the one between Monks and Oliver, the other between Fagin and Sikes. Through his conspiracy with Monks, Fagin becomes involved in both conflicts. He also becomes the agent whose decisions trigger the two lines of inevitable action, which subsequently converge.

The crisis in Oliver’s conflicts involves no significant desire on his part. Fagin makes one critical decision when he maneuvers Oliver into the Chertsey fiasco. The unsuccessful burglary is the climax in the boy’s misadventures. The grim disaster leaves him utterly helpless, but it is a turning point and his fortunes steadily improve from there. The resolution of his difficulties is achieved by Brownlow’s triumph over Monks.

In the smoldering rivalry between Sikes and Fagin, the crisis is reached when Fagin actually plans to have Sikes murdered. Fagin’s first step to eliminate Sikes involves having Nancy spied upon. This leads directly to the climax of the girl’s murder. With that bloody deed, the entire company of thieves is drawn into a whirlpool of events, which ultimately brings them all to ruin. The denouement discussed earlier—the unknotting of story complications—comes with Sikes literally being hanged in his own noose, at the end of the day when the gang has been demolished.

Dickens’s illustrations of the complications and their unraveling are accomplished by means of a complex mosaic of back-illumination. This technique offers several distinct advantages. It makes it easier to raise suspense to a high pitch and keep reader interest at a lively level. In order to draw the numerous persons into the current of events, Dickens is forced to make liberal use of accident and coincidence. By using the tricks and techniques of the dramatist that he was, Dickens is able to obscure his coincidences and accidents to the point where the reader scarcely notices.

Other improbabilities are also made to seem real through Dickens’s manipulation. In Chapter 49, for example, Brownlow undermines Monks’s resistance with the startling words “the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin.”6 These are the exact words that Nancy claimed to have overheard from Monks while she was engaged in her risky game of eavesdropping on Monks’s secret meeting with Fagin. Then Rose precisely remembered this statement after her tempestuous meeting with Nancy in Chapter 40 and passed it on to Brownlow, who uses it to demoralize

Monks with the very words that he spoke to Fagin in supposed secret. This flawless transmission would verge on the absurd if it were methodically reported in normal time-sequence. But as it is, the implausibility is lost sight of in the intricate patterns of disclosure.

The novel exhibits many characteristics of melodrama. The quality of pathos (sentimentality) is freely injected, most gratuitously in the case of Oliver’s friend, “little Dick.” The portrait of Oliver’s mother and Monks’s scar are signs used as recognition devices. Other examples of standard melodramatic apparatus include the doings of the evil brother, a destroyed will, assumed names, and the discovery of unknown relatives.

The romantic subplot between Rose and Harry uses elements of melodrama. In the contest between the evil and good forces of the book, Rose stands out in a dazzling display that would today be called “goody-goody.” Harry’s noble abandonment of fame and fortune for the sake of true love is a lofty tribute to virtuous sentiment—it could happen in real life, but it often does not. Although the romance is hardly a vital element of the plot, it does follow established literary tradition and provides a center of interest for bringing the book to a conclusion. Ⅳ. Analysis of Themes A. Main Themes

The story of Oliver Twist is a dark tale of corruption, degrading living conditions, and the terror of unanticipated violence. The novel takes place against a background that is by degrees appropriately sinister. Slime and filth seem inescapable. Even the elements conspire to accentuate the dismal atmosphere; the weather is often bitterly cold, and rain and fog are frequent.

Because criminals are thought to be creatures of the night, a large amount of significant action that takes place after dark. Sunlight rarely penetrates their gloomy world and even then perhaps only to mock—as on the morning that Nancy is killed. The only period of sustained brightness is during the summer months when Oliver stays with the Maylies at their rural cottage. Even then, black shadows are cast by Rose’s near-fatal illness and the chilling intrusion of Monks and Fagin.

The novel deals mainly with poverty and crime—the results of abandoning the rules and practices of social awareness and compassion. The criminal elements in the novel represent the outcasts of society who lurk inside crumbling ruins. These structures represent the tottering institutions that have helped to deform their lives. In Dickens’s descriptions, the words “neglect” and “decay” recur insistently. And it has been the neglect of human values that has fostered the spiritual decay that is so aptly reflected in the odious surroundings.

\"Oliver Twist\" centers on both a social and a personal theme. The social theme states that for every orphan who is rescued and encouraged to establish his identity in the world, there are many other orphans who are discarded to suffer and die a miserable death. Oliver is one of the orphans who has the strength to fight against his oppressors and is lucky to find a benefactor like Mr. Brownlow who helps the boy to assert his right as an individual.

However, there are many unfortunate orphans in the workhouse, ill-treated and malnourished, who die before they become aware of the world around them. Dick is one such boy who is endowed with a natural goodness and a cheerful presence but is denied the opportunity to reveal his latent potential. Thus he dies an untimely death.

On a personal level, the theme of Oliver Twist is the struggle of an individual in a harsh world for his survival. Oliver finds himself helpless as he is oppressed by his superiors in the workhouse and corrupted by Fagin and his criminal associates. However, his innate goodness and instinct for survival help him to remain uncorrupted and he emerges stronger after his trial.

B. Minor Themes

Dickens exposes the criminal world and conveys the message that crime leads to ignominy and isolation. The other minor theme that he brings up in the novel is that the dead have the power of influencing the living. Oliver's antagonists, Monks, the members of the criminal world, and the Bumbles who try to harm him bring dishonor to themselves and meet with a miserable end. When they are unable to escape from the eyes of law, they look helpless.

While reading the novel, the readers might feel the presence of the dead influencing certain living characters. Oliver sees the vision of his mother whenever he is showered with affection. When Mrs. Bedwin looks into his eyes with love and concern, the boy remembers his mother: \"Perhaps she does see me\" whispered Oliver, folding his hands together, \"perhaps she has sat by me. I almost feel as if she had.\"

The vision helps him to realize the worth of goodness and ward off evil in trying circumstances. Mr. Brownlow remembers fondly his deceased franc and her brother and, for the sake of their love, is prepared to forgive the misdeeds committed by Monks. The same love induces him to protect Oliver. The dead cast a positive influence on these characters, while for Monks and Sikes, the influence of the dead brings negative results. Monks inherits the feeling of hatred from his mother and even after her death, expresses this feeling towards all those who are good to Oliver. Sikes is haunted by the vision of Nancy after he kills her mercilessly. It chases him wherever he goes and finally, when he plans to make his escape good, it confronts him and causes his death.

Oliver Twist is a novel teeming with many closely interrelated ideas. There is preoccupation with the miseries of poverty and the spread of its degrading effects through society. With poverty comes hunger, another theme that is raised throughout the book, along with Dickens’s notion that a misguided approach to the issues of poverty and homelessness brings many evils in its wake. One of the worse consequences of poverty and being deprived of life’s essentials is crime, with all of its corrosive effects on human nature. Dickens gives a great deal of attention to the painful alienation from society suffered by the criminal, who may come to feel completely isolated as the fragile foundations of his own hostile world snap. Crime is bad enough in itself, Dickens seems to be saying. When crime is the result of poverty, it completely dehumanizes society.

On the positive side, Dickens places heavy value on the elevating influence of a wholesome environment. He emphasizes the power of benevolence to overcome depravity. And goodness—like criminal intent—may expect to earn its own suitable reward. Sound familiar? The Dickensian theme of virtue being its own reward has its roots in the novels and poems of chivalry and redemption, where the good prosper and the “wicked” are sent packing. Ⅴ. Characteristics of the writing styles

Oliver Twist is Charles Dickens’ second longest novel. This 25-year-old novelist determined to learn from the England realism artist William Hogarth. Charles Dickens wanted to set him as a good example, facing the life bravely and expressing the London poor resident’s life vividly. He had a great aim, that is, to resist on the society’s unfair things and awake the society consensus to pay more attention to it. A. Individual language

The novel deals mainly with poverty and crime, the results of abandoning the rules and practices of social awareness. The criminal elements in the novel represent the outcasts of society who lurk inside crumbling ruins. These structures represent the tottering instigation that has helped to deform their lives. In Dickens’s descriptions, the words “neglect” and “decau” recur

insistently. And it had been the neglected in the odious surroundings.

The individual language is an excellent way of Charles Dickens to shape people’s characters. The words of gangster, theft and maid all suit to their stations well, and he also used some right dirty slang. But Charles Dickens never use the natural way to express in his novel, after machining and carefully selecting, he used the best word to write. The main character Oliver, his word is every elegant and grant, and he even does not know what is brigandage means. He is an orphan that grew up in workhouse, never educated well, and the people whom he meets are all the bad and ugly guys. But why he can speak such elegant English? It can not be explained by using the historical materialism point. We can see it is very clear that Charles Dickens is trying his best to express his own moral ideal, but not pursuing the total reality.

Dickens portrays as Rose as a charming young woman who is warm, sensitive and cultured. As the ward of Mrs. Maylie, she takes care of Oliver when he is laid up in bed and become his companion after recovers. She understands his needs and provides him comfort and security. She takes pity on Nancy and tries to reform her. She takes Mr. Brown low into confidence by revealing Nancy’s story to him. Unsure of her origins, she refuses Mr. Harry Maylie’s proposal of marriage even though she loves him. After her true status is revealed, Mr. Harry decides to settle down in a village as parson. She married him. Dickens described her as a good Samaritan who wishes the best for everyone around her. Her heart is a reservoir of love. Thus she feels happy to strengthen her bond of friendship with Oliver, when it is revealed that she is his aunt.

Dickens’s style is marked by a kind of literary obesity that is displeasing to some modern tastes. But in this connection-as in all others-we need to look at Dickens from the standpoint of his contemporaries. This means judging his art in one instance as it was viewed by the audience he addressed, whose tastes and expectations were vastly different from our own. A tribute to the greatness of his work is that it can still be read with pleasure today in spite of some of its excesses. B. Sympathetic imagination

In all of the excellent realism articles, the story plot is always the developing history of characters that under some special environment. Oliver Twist also includes the sympathetic imagination. This is also a special writing style of Charles Dickens. But Charles Dickens did not follow any rules; he arranged the coincidences whenever he wanted. The first time that Oliver goes to the street to stole things, the person whom be stolen is just his dead father’s best friend Mr. Brownlow. The second time he was persuaded to go into a house to stole, the one whom be stolen is his ant Rose. Theses senses do not follow the reasons but Charles Dickens had his own talented wisdom, his writing are full of enthusiasm.

To the bad guy Fagin is also in the same way. In this novel, the main theft is just Fagin. When he is on trial, everything shows from Fagin’s heart. Just like his staring from the ceiling to the floor, so many folded eyes looking at him. He listens to the report of his criminal acts, and turn to the lawyer, hoping that the lawyer can say something to save him. In the crowd, some are eating, some can fan fans, and a young artist is drawing him. Fagin want to go near to the artist and to see whether the picture like him or not. A gentleman come near, he thinks, it is must be the lunch time, and what is for lunch? When he notices that there are so many thorns on the fence, he thinks it must be easy to destroy. And this makes him think of the death, he says to himself he is getting old and old and later there is no sound. At this point, Charles Dickens select a series of details carefully, not only describe the objective things but also show the character’s inner hear world vividly. I agree to the England writer Gorge Gissing, he set Charles Dickens create method as the

romantic realism. I think that is just the point, it suits Charles Dickens’s writing style well.

While these observations can lead one into a consideration of the limits of sentiment and the sympathetic imagination, we must be careful not to follow this path too soon and overlook the valuable aspects of the work. The key to this text is to remember that if Dickens fails to address the concrete problems of the realist and historian, it is because he never intended to do so. We should not, as some of his critics did, undervalue his text by concentrating too much on what he left out. He is not De Tocqueville; but then he never claimed to be.

Readers such as the Messenger reviewer make two mistakes. The first is to assume that Dickens' caricatures can make us laugh without telling us anything significant about ourselves and society. The second is to assume that symbols, generalizations, and moral ideals--because not adequate for describing an everyday, physical, reality--do not describe an equally real and important, if different, kind of truth.

In many ways, the pace of life was more unhurried and deliberate in the early-nineteenth century than it is now, so readers would have the time to savor Dickens’s rich use of language. In a period when people were thrown much on their own resources for diversion, without the intrusions of movies, radio, or television, they could enjoy a display of literary virtuosity for its own sake. The practice of reading aloud helped to bring out the novelist’s artistry. When Dickens read from his books, his audiences were entranced, so he must, at least unconsciously, have written with some thought for oral effect.

The conditions of publication undoubtedly were instrumental in shaping the writer’s technique. When he was faced with the challenge of holding his readers for over a year, he had to make his scenes unforgettable and his characters memorable. Only a vivid recollection could sustain interest for a month between chapters. Also, there was a need to cram each issue with abundant action to satisfy those who would re-read it while waiting impatiently for the next installment. What may seem excessively rich fare to those who can read the novel straight through without breaking may have only whetted the appetites of the original readers. The immediate popularity of Dickens’s works bears witness to the soundness of his literary judgment.

The story of Oliver Twist is a dark tale of corruption, degrading living conditions, and the terror of unanticipated violence. The novel takes place against a background that is by degrees appropriately sinister. Slime and filth seem inescapable. Even the elements conspire to accentuate the dismal atmosphere; the weather is often bitterly cold, and rain and fog are frequent.

A novel may have many levels of symbolism. Setting and characters may convey symbolic meaning aside from their plot functions. Some trait or gesture of a person may symbolize an aspect of his character, as Bumble’s fondness for his three-cornered hat serves to illuminate his devotion to a tradition of recognition, status, and power.

A purely symbolic character is one who has no plot function at all. The chimney sweep, Gamfield, may be looked upon in this light. He contributes nothing to the development of the plot but stands forth as a significant embodiment of unprovoked cruelty. Ordinarily, symbolic statement gives expression to an abstraction, something less obvious and, perhaps, even hidden. In spite of his conspicuous role in the plot, Brownlow exemplifies at all times the virtue of benevolence.

The novel is shot through with another symbol, obesity, which calls attention to hunger and the poverty that produces it by calling attention to their absence. It is interesting to observe the large number of characters who are overweight. Regardless of economics, those who may be considered prosperous enough to be reasonably well fed pose a symbolic contrast to poverty and

undernourishment. For example, notice that the parish board is made up of “eight or ten fat gentlemen”; the workhouse master is a “fat, healthy man”; Bumble is a “portly person”; Giles is fat and Brittles “by no means of a slim figure”; Mr. Losberne is “a fat gentleman”; one of the Bow Street runners is “a portly man.” In many ways, obesity was as much a sign of social status as clothing.

Ⅵ. Conclusion

In the novel, though the young Oliver Twist again and again fell for conspiracies of those thieves, who tried to torture Oliver’s body and poisoned Oliver’s heart intensely, he always survived and tried hard to seek for his own life. Then I realized what supported him all through were actually beliefs. In most cases, what you believe is what you’ll become. Believe that you are unlimited, that you can do anything you commit to doing, and when you do, your accomplishment will know no bounds. It’s all dictated by your attitude.

In the final analysis, love and care contain numerous forms; there are love forgiveness, love of trust, etc. But they all come from your beliefs in life. When someone tells you he’s deceived you, forgive him anyway, when someone tells you what he’s done, trust him anyway, and when you face adversities while chasing your dreams, think about your beliefs, then what hinders you will become a piece of cake in no time.

Charles Dickens said, “Love makes the world go around.” These immortal words have inspired us to chant the melody of love and to say the prayer of care forevermore. Let us, therefore, enjoy life and treat other people lovingly. These principles are the roots and foundation of the beliefs supporting this article and our mission together.

Notes

1Bentleys Miscellany, The Old Curiosity Shop (London: Foreign Language, 1998), 246. 2Jewish Chroniche, Monthly Review (Untied States: Foreign Language Press, 1996), 273. 3Jewish Chroniche, Monthly Review (Untied States: Foreign Language Press, 1996), 432. 4Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (London: Foreign Language, 1998), 408.

5Charles Bronte, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (London Foreign Language, 1990), 407. 6Martin Chuzzlewit, History of English Literature. (Fareham house, 1837), 8. 7Thackray, English And American Classics (Fareham house, 18), 761.

Bibliography

Fareham, Hampshire Untied Kingdom. Fareham House, 1993.

Fareham Twist, Dickens Charles 19 Folio Society. Hampshire Untied Kingdom, 1991. Jack Ziegler, Oliver Twist. Fareham Kingdom, 1991.

Jar Binkers, History of the English Literature. Sichuan Randon House, 1993. Peoria, 19th Century Cosmopolitan Series Oliver Twist. IL United States, 1992.