Oliver twist - I am going to analyze how Charles Dickens portrayed

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Oliver twist - I am going to analyze how Charles Dickens portrayed

Oliver's life to show his audience the poverty, sickness and desperation

that he saw around him ever since he was young.

Oliver twist essay

I am going to analyze how Charles Dickens portrayed Oliver's life to

show his audience the poverty, sickness and desperation that he saw

around him ever since he was young. The fictitious character Oliver

twist was born into extreme poverty. As Dickens writes: 'It remained a

matter of considerable doubt whether the child would survive to bear

any name at all.' Charles Dickens had first hand experience of

poverty; his parents were imprisoned for a year for being offenders of

the poor laws- they hadn't enough money to support their family and

got into debt, which they couldn't pay. So Charles spent most of his

time walking around the dirty back streets of London, where he

witnessed a great deal of poor people who had been reduced to

criminals, prostitutes and beggars who lived surrounded by poverty,

disease and abandoned children whose parents were either dead or not

able to look after their offspring financially. The vast division in

society of lower and upper classes influenced Dickens to write to tell

other people what the conditions for the poor were really like. He had

to be subtle; he didn't want to alienate his upper class audience. So

he wrote a novel, revolving around memorable characters and places to

entertain his audience. Dickens knew that people learnt more and were

more willing to listen whilst being entertained, so he wrote history

as entertainment. Dickens' audience consisted of two groups: the

sub-literate who were the poor that attended his readings as they

couldn't read, and the...

... middle of paper ...

...e white waist coated

gentleman was right or not, I should perhaps mar the interest of this

narrative (supposing it to possess any at all), if I ventured to hint

just yet, whether the life of Oliver Twist had this violent

termination or no. Dickens was uncertain of who Oliver was going to

turn out to be until the novel was well established. He was planning

the story as he went along, writing each chapter separately instead of

planning the whole novel.

Overall, Oliver Twist is one of the great novels written with a desire

to send a message out to people, and a message that changed people's

perspectives of poor life in those times, which I believe is the

reason that it is remembered so well to this day. From reading this

book I have learnt about the circumstances of those times in a way not

possible from reading a textbook. I saw it through a child's eyes.

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