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Human beings are unequal as we are born and raised differently. Charles Dickens presents the poverty, crime, and corruption he experienced during the Victorian Era in Oliver Twist and The Christmas Carol. Dickens projects the detrimental effects of Industrialization and human degradation through the use of characterization and imagery. He also shares his hope for the transition of evil to good and the prevention of corruption of innocent children. Dickens wants people to recognize the mass effect society has on shaping human nature.
Dickens, like many characters in his books, had a fair share of miserable, childhood experiences. During the Victorian Era, Dickens was raised in a middle-low class family and had to work in a factory to support his family. Dickens despised factory work because of the “stenches of rotting wood, cement, and blacking corks” (Shephard). He lived the factory life, which allowed him to experience the “pressures of living alone, missing his family, and scrounging for food often had him in tears” (Shephard). “The blacking factory, would seem to have given him broad access to the radical imagination of orphanhood” that would be reflected in the case of Oliver (Hochman 225). Dickens frequently visited his father’s prison and “observed the activity there and the occupants so intently” to keep track of the characteristics of every individual (Shephard). Many of these dark experiences are incorporated in his book about the prisoners, factories, and the perspectives of a child worker. His first sign of hope emerges when his father despite his poorness sends Dickens to Wellington House Academy (Shephard). This led him to never again face the miserable factory life and showcases Dickens’ father as a role model for h...

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...h Humbug to any form of charity to the poor. He is a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” (Christmas 10). In other words, Scrooge’s moral paralysis is a representation of upper class blindness to conditions below them (Gammon 21).
Despite all his skepticism towards society, Dickens provides his hopes for reform. Oliver and Bob Cratchit represented Dicken’s ideal of an incorruptible human being.
In both novels, Dickens wanted to criticize the unfairness and infectiveness of society.
Industrialism increased the social gap as shown… Scrooge is representative of the wealthy of the time who only cared about wealth and no sympathy for the poor. We see on Scrooge’s past that he was innocent, but was corrupted by society to pursue greed and survival of the fittest.
Oliver Twist was a condemnation of the Poor Law Amendment Act(Shelby)