Charles Dickens Research Paper

Charles Dickens Spring Final “One of the most widely read English authors of all time...” (Forster 1), Charles Dickens was portrayed with an abundant of popularity compared to his colleagues. His literary works were one of the earliest to display the “underclass and poverty stricken in Victoria London,” his stories of poverty, child labour, and slavery. (Hudson). Oliver Twist was influenced by Charles Dickens’ own childhood, his workhouse experience, and his effects of poverty on his life. In Oliver Twist, Dickens brings to light the harsh reality of poverty to those who would never have experience it, calling for social justice and equality, and shows England’s state of vulnerability while continuously fighting for the poor, oppressed, and
Although Charles Dickens was raised in a middle class family, his family fell to poverty because of “his [father’s] extravagance and ineptitude often [bringing] the family to financial embarrassment or disaster.” Charles father's pointless conduct with cash soon made up for lost time to him, bringing about his dad being sent to an debtors' jail in Marshalsea in 1824. With a specific end goal to pay for his dad's obligation, Charles' family sent him to work in a "rat infested blacking factory near to the Thames" at 12 years old years old. Charles “spent 10 hours a day pasting labels onto pots of shoe polish for 6 shillings a week” laboring off his family’s debts while working in the inhumane conditions. Feeling betrayed because his “loving parents so readily agreed to the enslavement of their bright young son,” Charles would not be able to forgive his parents, and no longer felt as though he had a strong father figure in his life (Johnson; Oates). In this purpose of Dickens' life, he started his ” giving him in-depth knowledge of the large city”, giving him top to bottom information of the extensive city, the city where Oliver Twist happens. He incorporates his experiences and perspective of poverty into his literature, being emphatic of children who were in similar situations (Johnson). One person that was significant was Bob Fagin, a
Whether a family having to commit their childrens to slave away in the inhumane workhouses or being compelled to depending on an existence of wrongdoing, getting away destitution appears to be purposeless. Through the portrayals of destitution and workhouse conditions, the difference of Bob Fagin and Mr. Brownlow, and the recovery of Nancy, Charles Dickens utilizes Oliver Twist as a way to depict his own particular life, utilizing it to battle the social reform of the Victorian England. Oliver Twist drives the high society to recognize these horrendous conditions, as the cries of foul play can at no time in the future can be