THE END OF FAGIN’S STORY

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Throughout Oliver Twist (1838) Charles Dickens depicts Fagin as a cunning and occasionally depraved man. Fagin does not show fear or remorse as he manipulates the Artful Dodger, Oliver, and Nancy to thieve for him. When Fagin is shown as the respectable Old Gentleman on page 62 or when he is conspiring with Noah Claypole in “The Jew and Morris Bolter Begin to Understand Each Other” (Dickens 343) he appears confidant and completely in control. However, Fagin finds himself brought to justice for his misdeeds in chapter LII, he shows fear for the first time. George Cruikshank’s penultimate illustration “Fagin in the Condemned Cell” (431) accompanying Dickens’s text, presents a different Fagin, one who shows dismay and dread for the first time as he awaits hanging.

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, Dickens recognizes this in depicting Fagin as he faces his death. When he is in the courtroom Fagin finds that “inquisitive and eager eyes peered from every inch of space” (426) and he cannot escape their judgment. As Fagin listens to the judge his eyes “turned sharply” (427) on his jury in the hopes of finding even a single person who feels sympathy for him. However, such a friend is not to be found, and when the guilty verdict is brought down, Fagin is sent to prison to await his sentence, “to be hanged by the neck, till he was dead” (429). Once Fagin is brought to his cell, his eyes cease their wandering and “casting his blood-shot eyes upon the ground” (429) he attempts to gather together his thoughts.

In Cruikshank’s illustration, Fagin’s eyes dominate the entirety of the scene. They bulge out of Fagin’s face, and, in agreement with Dickens’s text, “shone with a terrible light” (433). Where in “Oliver Introduced” and “The Jew...

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...e last hours of his life in the gloom contemplating the death he deserves.

In this penultimate chapter, Dickens and Cruikshank have worked together to transform Fagin from the jolly, corrupt man that he is throughout Oliver Twist into a frightened, cowering creature who inspires the question from the turnkey, “Fagin! Are you a man?” (435) Fagin drearily answers, “I shan’t be one long” (435); he is finally being punished for his criminal transgressions. Dickens goes on to describe the black apparatus of death. Through this illustration Cruikshank brings us a Fagin contemplating his transgressions and fearing his fate in the hours before his death.

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. New York: Oxford, 1978. Print.

Killian, Greg. "The Significance of The Number Seven." Watchman. N.p., n.d. Web. 25

Fed 2011. .

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