Oliver Twist
Charles Dicken’s “Oliver Twist” is one of
the best-known stories in this segment of nineteenth century literature. There
are quite a few adaptations around and the main characters are well known by
name among people who have never read the book or watched any of the
adaptations. Until this time round, I belonged to that group of people.
I had my own pretty solid idea about what
sort of story “Oliver Twist” was and I must say, it turned out to be quite
different.
The basic plotline of “Oliver Twist” is
that Oliver is an orphan who spends his early childhood in the care of the
parish social services in provincial England, early nineteenth century. This
means abuse in the extreme. Life in the parish workhouse is portrayed as very
hard and with very little freedom and sustenance. It is written flat out that
most children die so the parish can spend less money on the poor. Oliver’s
chief crime at this time is, that, when the children are very hungry, he asks
for more food. Oh horror! At this stage he is up against the tyrannic Mr.
Bumble, the beadle.
At age 9, Oliver is apprenticed to an
undertaker, but gets in trouble when he stands up against harassment from one
of the other apprentices (Noah Claypole). Oliver runs away towards London where
he meets Dawkins, also known as The Artful Dodger. The Artful brings him into
Fagin’s gang in the underbelly of London. This is a gang of pickpockets and
what other scams Fagin can come up with. Only when out on his first job does
Oliver realize that he is supposed to be stealing and so he runs away. He is
caught and brought before a magistrate, but the elderly man whom he was
supposed to steal from, drops his charges and instead takes him in.
In the care of Mr. Brownlow, Oliver
recovers and just as his life starts to look bright, he is kidnapped back into
the gang. This time round is no fun at all, Oliver knows what the gang is up
and when they take him along for a housebreaking, he sounds the alarm, and is
shot at in the ensuing melee. Fortunately, the people in the house are the
friendly Maylies and Oliver finds a new home there. Still, Oliver is not out
trouble as Sikes, Monk and Fagin are up to more mischief.
There is a lot more going on in Oliver Twist
than I thought. As a tale, there are many twists and turns and lots of drama
and for that alone, the book is a page-turner. Here I thought this was about a
boy living a dismal life with a gang of thieves, but there are so much more to
the story. No wonder this was quite a bestseller back in the nineteenth century.
Beside the story itself, what really works
in this book is when Dickens talk about life in the underworld of London. There
are many details and the world has texture and smell and individuals fleshed
out in details. You can follow them around on a map using the landmarks of
London and you can visualise the warren of Saffron Hill with a pub like the Cripples.
The pleasure Dickens had when describing these characters and their banter is
very obvious and the unfortunate result is that I as a reader risks caring more
for these characters, even the brutal Sikes, than the heroes of the story.
Dickens clearly had much less fun with the
heroes. As characters they are surprisingly flat, with the main character trait
being that they are GOOD, whatever that means and to the exclusivity of all
else. They are so over the top virtuous that I frankly do not like then very
much and that includes, unfortunately, Oliver Twist himself.
Another feature of the book that at first
seems like an asset, but eventually becomes a problem is the comic exaggeration
used by Dickens. Dickens wanted to highlight the absurd cruelty with which poor
people were treated at the time and so uses a sort of comic exaggeration to
describe the callousness of those in charge of poverty relief. I have no doubt
that abuse and fraudulence at the expense of the poor was the order of the day,
but in Dickens’ writing it becomes too easy to dismiss it as exaggeration and the
loss of realism removes us, sadly, from the story. We do get some bitter-sweet
laughs, but frankly, I think the price is too high for those. A character like
Mr. Bumble belongs in a cartoon, not in anything resembling realism.
Then of course there is the very strong antisemitic
trait. I am not certain what Dicken’s excuse was for that, but this is rather
hard to swallow, and I am usually not so sensitive to that.
This all sounds like I was unhappy with
Oliver Twist and that is not true at all. There is just so much good stuff here
that the faults are so much more glaring for the missed opportunity.
I do recommend it, and I am surprising myself
by looking forward to more from Charles Dickens.
