A Child's Torment. Review on Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

A boy losing his mother at his birth…thrown inside an orphanage…cruelly treated…and then one day fleeing to fall into the hands of thieves and criminals…ultimately saved by a benevolent, good Samaritan; does this theme seem familiar to you? I presume so, yes. This is the universal theme on which many writers wrote their stories, filmmakers of Hollywood and Bollywood made innumerable motion pictures, about the social injustice and the cruel and heartless treatment towards children throughout the world; and ironically the evil still persists.

But, about one hundred and sixty three years back, a writer named Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist with the same theme. He pointed his finger at the social inequalities and class discrimination of the Victorian society of England during the early nineteenth century, which was a cesspool with corrupt officials, prejudiced judges and hardened criminals. The middle class stamped the poor as savages of lower qualities. From the very beginning, Oliver Twist serves as a tirade against Victorian society’s treatment of children and women of the poor.

Oliver Twist’s mother dies at his birth. With the absence of his father, he is sent to a regional orphanage. At the age of six he is directed to a town workhouse. The children at this workhouse live in filthy and unhygienic conditions with inadequate food. They remain hungry always, as the food served is insufficient. One day, Oliver Twist, out of sheer hunger asked ” Please, sir, I want some more”. The loathsome officials treated this as a profane offence and ordered Oliver to be kept in solitary confinement. Not only that, Oliver was flogged on the table during suppertime every night, to admonish the other children not to indulge in such an act of asking for more. Oliver lives through the agony. At a later date, Oliver is given to an undertaker and he runs away to London from there. He falls from the frying pan into the fire, as he encounters a bunch of thieves and criminals. They coax him into crimes. Oliver’s anguish is never ending. Murder and mysteries follow. An old gentleman saves him.

Charles Dickens in his childhood endured very miserable conditions of poverty. His father was jailed for debt and he had to work in a factory at the age of twelve. His impoverished childhood had haunted him throughout and Oliver Twist is the epitome of his unfortunate situations. Dickens’ style of story telling is of rich originality. He describes horror with humour, like a bitter pill coated with sugar. There is deep pathos in the horrific conditions the children have to live through in the workhouse. Without proper cloth and hygiene and with pangs of hunger burning their stomachs, the agony of the innocent children flows through Dickens’ pen. It is Dickens who is entering the workhouse as Oliver Twist. When Oliver cries, it is Dickens who is crying with his humour and a heart full of pain, reminiscing his own childhood.

Dickens takes you through the crowded streets of London where you can see how invisible the poor are, among the filth and dirt. He strips the myth of middle class moral values and declares them as a complete sham. His boisterous humour has a murmur of bitter criticism of the unsympathetic treatment of the poor by the middle class. All the other characters of the novel truly represent the vices and the inhumanness of the feudalistic society. They shake the very foundation of our psychology. Charles Dickens has exhibited throughout the book his revolt against oppression, the revolt of the weak against the strong.

Oliver Twist represents the oppressed people, among whom one had innocently asked for more. The glitter of this innocence will not fade for generations to come.