The story of Oliver Twist is a dark tale of corruption, degrading living conditions, and the terror of unanticipated violence. The novel takes place against a background that is by degrees appropriately sinister. Slime and filth seem inescapable. Even the elements conspire to accentuate the dismal atmosphere; the weather is often bitterly cold, and rain and fog are frequent.
Because criminals are thought to be creatures of the night, a large amount of significant action that takes place after dark. Sunlight rarely penetrates their gloomy world and even then perhaps only to mock — as on the morning that Nancy is killed. The only period of sustained brightness is during the summer months when Oliver stays with the Maylies at their rural cottage. The novel is set against the background of the New Poor Law of , which established a system of workhouses for those who, because of poverty, sickness, mental disorder, or age, could not provide for themselves.
When Oliver goes to London, he innocently falls in with a gang of youthful thieves and pickpockets headed by a vile criminal named Fagin. Dickens renders a powerful and generally realistic portrait of this criminal underworld, with all its sordidness and sin. She steals the locket and ring that holds the key to the oprhans identity.
She left home in shame and died when her illegitimate son was born. Sowerberry — An undertaker; He accepts Oliver as an apprentice mourner. Noah Claypolea — Charity boy. He torments Oliver. He is employed by Fagin, under the alias of Bolter, and spies on Nancy.
He ends up as a police informer. Fang — A police magistrate and represents the worst abuses of judicial power. A lean long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair. She cares for Oliver and provides his first real mothering, when Brownlow rescues him from Fang. Corney later Mrs. Bumble — She runs the workhouse where Oliver was born. He has grown fat, more from good humor than from good living. Henry Harry Maylie — He loves Rose and wants to marry her, but she refuses because she believes she is illegitimate and therefore might hurt his chances to win elections.
To win Rose, Henry gives ups a political career and becomes a clergyman. The major action of Oliver Twist moves back and forth between two worlds: The filthy slums of London and the clean, comfortable house of Brownlow and the Maylies.
The first world is real and frightening. While the other is idealized, almost dreamlike, in its safety and beauty. The world of London is a world of crime.
Things happen there at night, in dark alleys and in abandoned, dark buildings. Such darkness suggests that evil dominates this world.
Dickens often uses weather conditions to aid in setting a scene. In Oliver Twist, bad things happen in bad weather. Dickens uses lots of symbolism in this book. One use is the allusion to obesity, which is an inverse way, symbolizes hunger by calling attention to its absence.
It is interesting to observe the large number of characters who are corpulent. Those who may be considered prosperous enough to be reasonably well fed pose a symbolic contrast to poverty and undernourishment.
Other uses are how evil people are described as dangerous animals or as typical stage villains.
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