Book #98: Oliver Twist

Book #98: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

July 20, 2014


About a year ago, I downloaded a bunch of public-domain classic audiobooks on my Kindle. I found myself thinking that I would never read all of them. Well, I still have a few to go (and of course, I never just read straight classics), but I was recently surprised by how few were actually left. This was one of them.

Oliver Twist was Dickens' second published work. It's also one of his best known; most people know who Oliver Twist is, thanks to the many movies that have been produced. The "please, sir, may I have some more?" scene (which actually comes right near the beginning of the book) is very famous. I never actually saw any movie version of Oliver Twist but, like many of the well-known classics that I've read, I knew the basic premise going in.

Just as I observed with A Christmas Carol, Dickens really uses this work as a vehicle for his own social messages. At the beginning of the book, he is bitingly sarcastic when describing the people who control the church-run orphanages and work-houses. Essentially, these places sound like concentration camps, and the earnest conversations between the parochial council members about how feeding the paupers anything more than a small ration of gruel would actually be bad for them made me think of S.S. officers. As I've written on this blog before, Dickens had family that spent time in debtors prison, maybe even in workhouses with these sort of conditions. This was when he himself was a kid, so I wonder if he was subjected to the treatment of one such orphanage, or if he was left to run the streets and make his own way. Certainly, the descriptions of the children at the beginning of the book are heart-breaking. I think Dickens had good intentions with this book, to shed some light on the cruelty and indignity that the poor faced in their society.

What's ironic about Dickens' compassion towards these people's suffering is that, if he were around during World War II, he maybe wouldn't have cared so much about thoseconcentration camps. Because Dickens was very anti-Semitic. I noted that when I read Great Expectations, but it was really blatant in this book. One of the main characters is described as "the Jew" just as often as he is called in the narrative by his own name, "Fagin." Even sweet little Oliver refers to him as "the Jew." Oh, man. And, of course, he is disgusting to behold, as is the young man Barney (also called "a Jew") who associates with these criminals. There's one scene that describes him rubbing the side of his nose, a gesture that the person he is conversing with can't imitate because his Anglican nose is too small. Oh, brother. That's really big dark stain on this classic story, but people who actually haven't read the book don't realize this. Yup, innocent little Oliver Twist was a bigot. Go figure.

As I've been wont to do recently, I read up on some of the reviews that have been written about this book on the Goodreads site. Some people complained that the plot was predicable. I'd heartily agree with that, but I don't necessarily fault Dickens for that. This story has been influential; I mean, Anniedefinitely puts me in mind of Oliver Twist. And many stories and movies for children have featured young characters who are continuous victims of circumstance...but things eventually come out all right for them. Besides the blatant anti-Semitic attitudes expressed in the book, this is a perfect story for children...except that things do get a little violent when it comes to Sikes, one of the criminals with whom Fagin associates. The story doesn't seem sophisticated to today's readers because, I think, many of the plot twists and conventions that Dickens employed are now played out. In his time, the story may have seemed fresh and exciting.

I do feel that Dickens is shoving his agenda down his readers' throats, and sacrificing realism in so doing. The last few pages of the book are dedicating to tying everything up neatly. Everything turns out just peachy-keen for the "good guys," and the "bad guys" all meet their just desserts. Coincidentally, the few people who were kind of Oliver are all connected to his past, and ta-da, he's actually wealthy! He was the legally-illegitimate son of a wealthy man, whose half-brother (and his mother, when she was living) did their best to keep Oliver, and anyone connected to him, downtrodden. Turns out that sweet Rose Maylie is Oliver's actual auntie, and she and her cousin are not really cousins and therefore can get married without it being weird (haha,Dangerous Cousins). It was kind of sweet that Rose and Oliver, both orphans who had difficult childhoods, could find each other, I guess.

Two things that I did appreciate about the ending: one, that little Dick died, and two, that young Master Bates (hahahahahaha!) amended his criminal ways and eventually became a successful farmer. Now, I didn'twant Oliver's sick little friend to die, but it did add some realism to an otherwise nauseating ending. And Master Bates (tee-hee!) was one of the my favorite characters (besides Mr. Grimwig), so it was good to see him have a nice ending.

Dickens does a better job in this book, then he did in Great Expectations, with fleshing out his characters. Now, the main character was rather blah, and I was glad that the book didn't focus 100% on Oliver's story. Fagin, for instance, could have been a really great character, if he weren't described as a negative stereotype for Jews: greasy, big-nosed, money-obsessed. Nancy was interesting, especially in contrast to sweet Rose Maylie; Rose was rather two-dimensional, while Nancy was a complex character, whose history, while not described in detail, could be imagined. Nancy is the only "good" character who met a sorry fate (besides young Dick, of course, and the Dodger, who wasn't all bad), and that's too bad, but realistic, at least. The scenes with the criminals were the most interesting in the book, I think. I wonder just how much Dickens was able to draw from his own life when writing those particular scenes and creating those particular characters.

Overall, I would say that, like all of the works by Dickens that I've read so far, this is an essential classic that needs to be taken with more than a grain of salt. Now that I've read the two Dickens works that are most famous and have been the most influential in popular culture, I can see why other people would want to retell these stories. Dickens did okay the first time around, but his works are far from perfect.