Oliver Twist

LIFE: 1812/1870

· At 11 he starts working in a factory (which profoundly influences his novels)
· He works in a legal office (hate for law as an institution – deep knowledge of people’s souls)
· He works as a journalist: he learns to write in an interesting way and to understand the feelings and reactions of the readers
· He became very popular publishing his novels serially on the newspapers

HIS NOVELS

Setting:

· Countryside
· Old England (Pickwick Papers)
· Provincial towns
· London (most important)

Characters

· He was very good at creating them
· Vivid picture of the Victorian Age
· Deep correspondence between internal and external aspect
· Divided into good or bad (simple approach to life as in childhood)
· They are flat characters

Plots

· Very complex
· A lot of subplots (usually dealt with in separated chapters)

STYLE

· He combines social realism with the poetical devices of metaphors and symbolism
· He explores the depths of the human psyche
· He wants to represent the social conflicts and the evil in the society
· Often the world is seen through the children’s eyes
· he is an omniscient narrator (who describes everything)

by Erika Beretti

Hard Times

OLIVER TWIST'S GROWTH, EDUCATION AND BOARD

JACOB'S
ISLAND

OLIVER TWIST’S GROWTH, EDUCATION AND BOARD

Read the passage

(from “Oliver Twist” - Chapter 2)

SETTING:

· The workhouse, a bad place where the orphans live, ruled by Mrs Mann

TIME:

· Oliver’s ninth birthday

WHERE OLIVER IS SPENDING HIS BIRTHDAY:

· In a cellar with two other children

WHY THEY ARE IN THE CELLAR:

· Because the children have had the courage to ask for more soup

CHARACTERS:

Mrs Mann :

· In the passage there isn’t a physical description
· She pretends to be a good woman but she represents the falsity. She is cruel with the children, but she pretends to love them in front of Mr Bumble
· She is interested only in the money that Mr Bumble must give her
· She is clever and she knows how to deceive Mr Bumble: she exalts his qualities showing humility and devotion
· She pretends to be sorry for Oliver’s leaving, but in reality she isn’t interested in this

Mr Bumble:

· There is a physical description: he is a fat man and a choleric one and his name reminds us of an inept person
· He is the parish officer
· He considers his activity a mission for the society: he is proud of his authority and also of his qualities. He considers himself a great orator
· Like Mrs Mann he is interested only in business
· He is a victim of Mrs Mann’s flattery, who he considers a good woman
· He isn’t interested in the children and names them in alphabetic order

Oliver:

· He appears only in the last part of the text
· There is a physical description: he is a young, thin, frightened, pale child
· He is compelled to live in the orphanage in a terrible state
· In the passage he is compelled to spend his ninth birthday in a cellar with two other children because they have had the courage to ask for more soup
· For fear of Mrs Mann he pretends to be sorry for his leaving, but the tears into his eyes mean that he is really suffering for his friends who remain at the workhouse
· Even if he is very young he is capable of strong emotions and strong spirit

STYLE:

· Great importance of irony, because irony unmasks both Mr Bumble’s pretensions and Mrs Mann’s falsity
· A lot of dialogues
· Complex and dramatic story

THEMES:

· Dickens’ characters are a realistic and vivid picture of the Victorian England and he condemns the exploitation and the ill-treatment of children and the cruelty of the institution like the Church

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JACOB'S ISLAND

Read the passage

(from “Oliver Twist” - Chapter 50)

SETTING:

· Jacob’s Island, an unknown place in London near the Thames. This part is described as the dirtiest and poorest one in the city

SUBJECTS:

· 1st part: the visitor
· 2nd part: the stranger

THEMES:

· The description of the place suggests the tragic event that is going to happen (Fagin’s suicide)
· The passage is described through a zooming technique:

1. general description of the place
2. the description becomes more detailed, with the presence of people, too
3. detailed description of Jacob’s island

· Describing the people, the shops and the buildings, in a poor way, Dickens gives the sense of desolation. He underlines the squallor and the poverty using a lot of superlatives

· Important metaphor: the people that live on Jacob’s island are as “the raff and refuse of the river”, because on the island the squallor is present in both people and place. There is a sort of correspondence between the physical aspect of the characters and the soul

· Dickens makes a social criticism in representing poor people and poor places: denouncement of the Victorian Age

STYLE:

· Quite long sentences
· A lot of adjectives and images
· The dominant colour is black
· Dickens makes a good portrait of London, one of the places he knows better
· Great ability in the use of the language

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FACTS, FACTS, FACTS

Read the Passage

(from “Hard Times” -Chapter 2)

SETTING:

· The passage is set in a school founded by Mr Gradgrind, where children are taught “nothing but facts”

TIME:

· A typical utilitarian lesson that consists in asking technical and scientific meanings of some words

CHARACTERS:

Mr Thomas Gradgrind (and the government officer):

· He is a man of reality, a man of fact
· There isn’t a physical description
· He is the prototype of Utilitarianism
· He isn’t interested in the children and he names them using numbers

Sissy Jupe:

· She is a young girl, dark-eyed and dark-haired
· She represents the imagination of childhood, human feelings and sensibility

Bitzer:

· He is the result of the Utilitarian philosophy, that destroys the fantasy and the imagination and judges the external world in accordance with its pratical value
· There is a physical description: he is light-eyed and light-haired

THEMES:

· The contrast between the Utilitarianism and Imagination and sense of solidarity

· Dickens makes a criticism to the institutions, like the school, that dehumanises children

· Absurdity of the Utilitarian language

STYLE:

· A lot of dialogues
· Importance of the irony, that unmasks the absurdity of Utilitarianism

by Alessandra Borghi

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