Analysis to the Characters of Oliver Twist.doc

Analysis to the Characters of Oliver TwistThesis statement:In this composition, I will share my views on the analyzing forOliver Twist and its relationship with the characters in the work. I. IntroductionII. Charles Dickens A. The briefly statement of novel in Mid 19th B. Brief introduction IIIOliver TwistA.Purpose Dickens writes Oliver Twist1. Original2. Purpose3. EnvironmentB.Relationship 1. DescriptionIV. Fagin A. Fagin and his denB. Origin the Jew1. The principle of Good2. Anti-Jew V. NancyA. complaint B.commentaryVI. Conclusion Abstract: Charles Dickens is one of the greatest critical realists in English literature history. Oliver Twist is his masterpiece. It is Dickens favorite novel. The typical characteristic of the structure of “Oliver Twist” is multiunit-integer. This paper takes Oliver Twist as an example to expound the structure of multiunit-integer in Dickens novels. Firstly, Dickens spends most of his energies on Oliver Twist, so there must be certain writing background, writing purposes and characters for Oliver Twist. Secondly, multiunit-integer has its own definition and features. The typical of the structure of Dickens novels is multiunit-integer. The multiunit-integral structure experiences a period of evolution. The forming of the multiunit-integral structure has certain reasons. In a word, the multiunit-integral structure conforms to the reality of Dickens novels, so it is successful. On all accounts, this paper will make the readers have a deeper understanding of the structure of Dickens novels and make it convenient for people to appreciate Dickens novels. Meanwhile, I hope my paper could cast a brick to attract jade for people who are working on the study of Dickens novels.Keyword: critical masterpiece multiunit-integer structure I. IntroductionCharles Dickens protagonist in OliverTwist is good from birth and who stays that way despite a terrible social environment. Dickens implicit attribution of OliverTwists nobility to his lineage is problematic because it is antithetical to middle-class politics and the form of the Victorian novel. Dickens attempts to modify the notion of inherited virtue by using the Romantic concept of a childs instinctive closeness to heaven and goodness. Moreover through Monks character he makes it clear that upper-class is not equated to virtue. However, OliverTwist remains different from Dickens later novels in which he exploressocial interactionbetweenthe classes more realistically. II.Charles Dickens Mid 19th century of England between those conservative poets and prose writers there were a number of novelists. They had a world of sympathy for the miseries and a strong feeling for lathe poor laboring masses. They cried Flout loud against social injustice but they also did not approve of violence to fight the social wrong. They had been know as critical of the social reality in the sense that they were strongly critical of the social reality of their time but they had never thought of overthrowing the existing social order that in this way, they could establish anew one. These critical realists of the Mid19th century were all honest people and real artists in spite of their limitations in their general point of view on life. By exposing the social injustice and the vices of the upper class, they put their hearts into depicting the miserable existence of the common people: They gave a truthful picture of capitalist England of the time. They followed the fine tradition of their great literary predecessor of 18th century realism and early 19th century romanticism. They showed their warm sympathy on those people who suffered a lot. The greatest of the critical realists was Charles Dickens. In his early years, he worked as a reporter and this experience gave him a good knowledge of the political life of England at that time and it had a far-reaching effect upon his lifelong contempt for all the political institution as practice in England. As result of his ability to notice things of London life, a volume of stories and sketches of London street scenes, Sketches of Boz, was published. In 1837, his first novel Pickwick Papers appeared and established his reputation as an important writer of the time. This success was repeated again and again during the rest of his life, with the publication of some 15 novels as well as volumes of stories, travelogues and countless sketches and essays. In his very early literary period, Dickens attacked one or more specific evils in Victorian England: debtors prison. Workhouse. Yorkshire schools, capital punishment and so on. The most important of these novels was one of optimism and a light and cheery tone, which was maintained, with plenty of humor and laughter with the reactionary forces for the Middle class who were running more rampant, Dickens was more alive to the social reality and become more critical. Now, his optimistic spirit was replaced by strong feeling of depression and resentment. It was a successful period in which Dickens attained to his maturity as a great artist. The whole period was also characterized by the change and development of the great novelists artistic style. Nor and satire this time just gradually gaveappoint to his sentimentality, his mood of inhibition and a kind of dramatic tension.Charles Dickenss tumultuous childhood did indeed shape the person he became, as well as have a definite impact on his literary career. There are shades of young Dickens in many of his most beloved characters, including David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and of course, Great Expectations Pip. Like Dickens, all three of these characters came from humble beginnings and were able to rise above their respective circumstances to achieve success. Similarly, Dickens literary success is owed in large part to his unhappy childhood experiences. He did not merely overcome his past. He triumphed over it by incorporating it into best-selling works of art. Drawing on these events not only provided a cathartic release from childhood traumas, it also modernized the classic rags-to-riches success story. When comparing Dickens childhood to Great Expectations, it becomes apparent not only how these formative years influenced his literary career by inspiring many of the characters and themes predominant in the novel, but also how Dickens used his work as a form of therapeutic release from childhood tensions.Charles Dickens childhood and young adulthood was definitely filled with enough drama to base a novel upon. Born February 7, 1812, to John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Elizabeth, Charles spent his earliest years in the English seaport town of Portsmouth. The first years of his life were idyllic enough, although the family did have a penchant for living beyond their means. Even his birth announcement gives evidence to this, reporting the birth On Friday, at Mile-end Terrace, the Lady of John Dickens, Esq. a son (Allen 19). This is a lofty pronouncement coming from a lowly government employee, with neither money nor title to lay claim to. Due to this, Charles considered Friday his lucky day, needing to believe he had been born with great expectations and the talent and will to realize them.When Charles was ten years old, the family was transferred yet again, this time to London.The more expensive locale, coupled with the decrease in pay his father suffered for no longer being stationed outport, did not augur well for the family, who still had not learned the value of money management (Allen 30-31). To Charless dismay, he was not to be enrolled in a London school, instead being dispatched to do odd jobs around the house. Kaplan believes the termination of Dickens education to have been a major blow to his ego, as he had already imagined himself a man with a profession, enjoying success. He would be a gentleman by talent and achievement (34). To help pay off the familys outstanding debts, James Lamert, a family friend, secured Charles a post at Warrens Blacking Warehouse, a shoe polish factory. The job, which consisted of pasting labels onto pots of shoe polish, was a tedious and humiliating one for Dickens, especially when his boss moved him to a window at the front of the warehouse for all the passersby to see. It was also a time that Charles would never be able to forget. His situation only worsened when it became clear that the extra money Charles brought home from his paltry income would not be enough to save his father from debt.On February 24, 1824, his father was arrested and sent to a debtors prison for failing to pay his creditors.Just this experience let Dickens write Oliver.,and Oliver is Dickens in the novel.III. Oliver Twist OliverTwist was Dickens second novel, which marked the beginning of Dickens literary life. It began to appear in a monthly magazine. “I had perhaps the best subject I have ever thought of, I have thrown my whole hear and soul into Oliver.” That its general purpose was clear in his mind was evident from his laterwritten preface;” I wished to show, in little Oliver, the principle of Good Surviving through every adverse circumstance and triumphing at last”. The companions among whom he was to be tried were the criminals of Londons underworld. The author depicted it not in a romantic mood just as his contemporary novels, but showed much miserable reality. That reality was the great and enduring strength of the book. Dickens knew it a lot by close observation, which he had already demonstrated in, had newspaper sketches of London streets and criminal court. Also, there was another reason, that is, he knew it by his own experience. He was born in a provident way; so even when he was very young, he suffered a lot. He knew those kinds of feeling and of course he could share the solitary childs pain, for he, be wildered in those years when he hand labored hopelessly in the blacking- warehouse. As he said much later, he himself might have become a little robber or a little vagabond. That period of time was so bitter and galling to this sensitive boy that many tears later, when he was very successful, he could not look back main reason that why he took much attention to common peoples lives and their feeling. Oliver twist was one of the most important social novels in Dickens early works. Also, it was the first tine that Dickens led readers into a very sad world, the description of the criminal slums of London that little Oliver lived brought Dickens a new class of serious reader interested in social reform. People started to think about social reason for all of those criminal phenomena. And in this novel, Dickens advocates his view of world charitable person will have good recompense. Oliver Twist was famous for exposing the dark sides of people lived out that time. It exposed the hypocritical and cruelty of parish workhouse through depicting the little orphan boy Oliver Twists childhood in it. He gave realistic pictures of the horrible existence in workhouse. One of the important characteristics of Oliver Twist was real and specific description of people who lived in the bottom of society. Their miserable lives, including all the details, gave the reader a real feeling; these were fictions. Also, itwas the first time that many small potatoes appeared in England literature. Dickens carried the good traditions of realism novels since 18th century of England and also developed it. He created his unique technique and formed his own style. Dickenss works axe very important in English literary history. They established the base of critical realism and had effect upon the development of the whole European realism novelsDickens, this man, who was to become a great portrayer of child life, had a sad, painful childhood. He was born in 1812 at London, a district of the city of Portsmouth, Hampshire, where his father was a Navy pay office clerk whose lovable, improvident nature was later made famous in the person of Micawber. Charles education was haphazard, but he supplemented it with constant reading, particularly of the eighteenth century novels in his fathers small library. When Charles as still a child his father was transferred to London, where the expenses of a large family so overtaxed the resources of Mr. Dickens that he was at last committed to the Marshalsea, a debtors prison. Dickens, then 12,was left to look after himself and, with the help of a relative, found a job pasting labels on bottles in a blacking warehouse. In here he was poorly clothes, ill fed, forced to live in the cheapest place to be found, and to associate with the roughest kind of companions. Just the experience let Dickens written Oliver Twist, and the little boy Oliver just like a showdown of Dickens childhood.Before discussing Olivers separation from the city, we first must look at how he is introduced to London and examine the role that the city plays in Olivers life as well as in the lives of Dickens himself. “Although both boys, Dickens and Oliver,are of a similar age, the Dodger appears decidedly older in his grown mans clothes and because he had got about him all the airs and manners of a man. In due time, Oliver himself begins to mesh with the dark and dirty surroundings of Fagins den and even with all of central London. In all the dreary rooms, there was but one back-garret window, with rusty bars outside, which had no shutter, and out of which Oliver often gazed with a melancholy face for hours together; but nothing was to be descried from it but a confused and crowded mass of house-tops, blackened chimneys, and gable-ends (Dickens 146). Here, Oliver develops a physical connection to the den and the surrounding city, as his gaze is fixed on the largely indecipherable crowded mass of the city in the same manner that the window of his observatory was nailed down (146). His many gazes out the window serve to connect him to the city; however, his gaze stems from a longing and desire to be someplace other than the den. In this instance, Olivers connection with the city is far more distant than the relationships that Fagin and the Dodger share with the city. Olivers vastly different relationship with the city of London allows him to distance himself from the corruption in a manner that other characters cannot achieve. Nothing physically ties any of the characters to a specific place such as London, even if they share a distinctly clear physical relationship with that place. As noted earlier, Oliver runs into the Dodger outside the city, but his relationship to the city is so embedded in his identity that he takes a part of the citys corruptive forces with him. When Fagin leaves London and his den, he too carries particular reminders of those places. The evenning on which Fagin and Monks discover Oliver sleeping in his room, the mere presence of Fagin changes the scene. Still asleep, Oliver senses that the air became close and confined, and he thought with a glow of terror that he was in the Jews house (281). Fagins identity is so closely intertwined with his den, which represents the vile center of London, that he cannot rid himself of the connection. In crafting Olivers relation to the city, Dickens takes particular care to ensure that it does not damage his identity but instead only touches him on a surface level, thus allowing him to blend in with society, unlike the Dodger and Fagin. As a result, this detachment from the citys identity allows Oliver to prosper in the care of the Maylies and Mr. Brownlow. Dickens decision to represent Oliver Twist as incorruptible has exposed both author and character to considerable abuse.(1) Exactly why did Dickens pursue such a strategy? I will argue that Dickens represents his hero as morally immune from the effects of his brutal childhood environment because of an acute anxiety about the ability of the bourgeois hearth to inculcate a moral regimen sufficient to withstand the threats and solicitations lurking beyond what the author wished to imagine as the charmed circle of Victorian domesticity. This anxiety, far from being peculiar to Dickens, is mandated by the very structure of nineteenth-century middle-class discourses of domestic pedagogy. Thus what I hope to achieve is not so much a revelation of Dickens personal psychology as a demonstration of how certain contradictions within bourgeois ideology create, in Oliver Twist, a protagonist and a narrative in conflict with each other and-at times-with the formal requirements of the novel as a genre.Last, Oliver Twist was the Dickens himself in the novel. IV. Fagin Now it is the mixture of these contradictory feelings about the city that helps give the novel its distinctive tone of defuse anxiety. Yet in Oliver Twist London in also the home of spectacle, lurid and grotesque, and one of Dickens narrative purposes-slyly helped along by the sequence that starts with the Artful Dodger discovering the hungry Oliver and ends when the boy is brought to Fagins den-is to involve us in Olivers excitements of discovery. But more than involve: it is a saving characteristic of this novel that we are never limited to Olivers milky perception As Fagin glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal.Fagins den is both a dungeon and a place of refuge. It is . . . absolutely shut off from the outside world, but it is also a parody, at least, of a home, that place where one lives safely. . . . Fagins den says Dickens is a snug retrea