book review for oliver twist

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Dickens' 'Oliver Twist': Summary and Analysis

A Gritty, Crusading Work of Art

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M.A., English Literature, California State University - Sacramento
B.A., English, California State University - Sacramento

Oliver Twist is a well-known story, but the book is not quite as widely read as you might imagine. In fact, Time Magazine's list of the top 10 most popular Dickens' novels put Oliver Twist in 10th place, even though it was a sensational success in 1837 when it was first serialized and contributed the treacherous villain Fagin to English literature . The novel has the vivid storytelling and unimpeachable literary skill that Dickens brings to all his novels, but it also has a raw, gritty quality that may drive some readers away.

Oliver Twist was also influential in bringing to light the cruel treatment of paupers and orphans in Dickens' time. The novel is not only a brilliant work of art but an important social document.

'Oliver Twist': Indictment of the 19th-Century Workhouse

Oliver, the protagonist, is born in a workhouse in the first half of the nineteenth century. His mother dies during his birth, and he is sent to an orphanage, where he is treated badly, beaten regularly, and poorly fed. In a famous episode, he walks up to the stern authoritarian, Mr. Bumble, and asks for a second helping of gruel. For this impertinence, he is put out of the workhouse.

Please, Sir, Can I Have Some More?

He then runs away from the family that takes him in. He wants to find his fortune in London. Instead, he falls in with a boy called Jack Dawkins, who is part of a child gang of thieves run by a man called Fagin.

Oliver is brought into the gang and trained as a pickpocket. When he goes out on his first job, he runs away and is nearly sent to prison. However, the kind person he tries to rob saves him from the terrors of the city gaol (jail) and the boy is, instead, taken into the man's home. He believes he has escaped Fagin and his crafty gang, but Bill Sikes and Nancy, two members of the gang, force him back in. Oliver is sent out on another job—this time assisting Sikes on a burglary.

Kindness Almost Saves Oliver Time and Again

The job goes wrong and Oliver is shot and left behind. Once more he is taken in, this time by the Maylies, the family he was sent to rob; with them, his life changes dramatically for the better. But Fagin's gang comes after him again. Nancy, who is worried about Oliver, tells the Maylies what's happening. When the gang finds out about Nancy's treachery, they murder her.

Meanwhile, the Maylies reunite Oliver with the gentleman who helped him out earlier and who—with the kind of coincidental plot turn typical of many Victorian novels—turns out to be Oliver's uncle. Fagin is arrested and hanged for his crimes; and Oliver settles down to a normal life, reunited with his family.

The Terrors Awaiting Children in London's Underclass

Oliver Twist is probably not the most psychologically complex of Dickens' novels. Instead, Dickens uses the novel to give readers of the time a dramatic understanding of the deplorable social situation for England's underclass and particularly its children . In this sense, it is more closely linked to Hogarthian satire than Dickens' more romantic novels. Mr. Bumble, the beadle, is an excellent example of Dickens' broad characterization at work. Bumble is a large, terrifying figure: a tin-pot Hitler, who is both frightening to the boys under his control, and also slightly pathetic in his need to maintain his power over them.

Fagin: A Controversial Villain

Fagin, too, is a wonderful example of Dickens ability to draw a caricature and still place it in a convincingly realistic story. There is a streak of cruelty in Dickens' Fagin, but also a sly charisma that has made him one of literature's most compelling villains. Among many film and television productions of the novel, Alec Guinness's portrayal of Fagin remains, perhaps, the most admired. Unfortunately, Guiness's makeup incorporated stereotypical aspects of portrayals of Jewish villains. Along with Shakespeare's Shylock, Fagin remains one of the most controversial and arguably antisemitic creations in the English literary canon.

The Importance of 'Oliver Twist'

Oliver Twist is important as a crusading work of art, although it did not result in the dramatic changes in the English workhouse system that Dickens may have hoped. Nevertheless, Dickens researched that system extensively before writing the novel and his views undoubtedly had a cumulative effect. Two English reform acts addressing the system actually preceded the publication of Oliver Twist , but several more followed, including the influential reforms of 1870. Oliver Twist remains a powerful indictment of English society in the early 19th Century.

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Oliver Twist

The Social Eye of Morality

Author: Charles Dickens

Famous for the “please sir, I want some more” line Oliver Twist is the classic story of a young, orphaned boy growing up in the workhouses of rural England where gentle society, religious figures, and the powers that be oppress him merely for being born poor and illegitimate. A biting satire, not afraid to get into the realism of desperation, Oliver Twist journeys from the tribulations of the work house to the London slums where Oliver is held captive by a gang of thieves, told to either learn the trade or die. Jostled between the need to survive and his innate, innocent desire to do good, Oliver’s achingly poignant story is embroiled in the life of paupers, prostitutes, murderers, and the society that forces them to desperate measures. Dicken’s twisted humor cuts to the bone, his commentary is deeply effecting, and all the while he keeps the thrum and measure of an addicting story. Tense and dangerous, Oliver Twist isn’t the stuffy old classic you thought it would be, but instead a dark, often sordid story unafraid to look into the nooks and crannies of neglected cities and broken lives.

Beginning, as many of Dicken’s novels do, with the birth of the protagonist (Oliver) the story follows him from infancy to adulthood, only swerving at the conclusion to concentrate on the gang of thieves, run by the old criminal, Fagin, and the way in which their circumstances and forced corruption shape their destruction. Continually starved at the workhouse, Oliver is eventually thrust out (after requesting more gruel) into apprenticeship with a coffin maker (Mr. Sowerberry.) From here, the abuse escalates both physically and mentally and Oliver, stuck between the gallows and workhouse, flees to London, bathing in the anonymity of the city and the rumors of work for a willing lad. His own naivety soon leads him to be picked up by The Artful Dodger, a charismatic child thief Oliver’s own age, who ostensibly takes pity on a starving orphan and brings him home to Fagin, a deceitful man determined to rob all of those with whom he comes in contact. The inhuman Fagin with his continual application of “my dear” embodies all that is detestable yet irresistible about villainy and soon has Oliver thoroughly deceived. However, when Oliver is falsely accused of picking pockets, his newfound understanding leads to a desire to flee the gang of thieves and escape into a better life. Events spiral dangerously, launching volatile secrets to the surface about Oliver’s background, true parentage, and intended future. Meanwhile, Bill Sykes, a housebreaker accomplice of Fagin’s, has taken a keen interest in the boy and with the assistance of his presumed girlfriend (also thief/probably prostitute) Nancy, and hatches a scheme to drag Oliver back to the streets and into a life of infamy and terror. Should Oliver refuse, Sykes is always ready to make good on his escalating threats of physical violence.

A visceral novel, Oliver Twist while beautifully and eloquently written, is all about the story and the intense emotions elicited by the resulting depravity of an underclass desperate to survive. Examining the cause and effect relationships of callous superiority and the integrity of alleged social convention/position, Dicken’s critique here is made with bitter, bloody blows. Not ashamed to unveil the uglier aspects of life, and indeed death, Oliver’s story is an intensely personal one that, thereby, becomes universal. Dicken’s captures the despair and goodness of Oliver, projecting his own inner fears, uncertainties, and oppression in a cadence that breaks down barriers and transforms pages into thoughts and soul longings, touching readers in a manner that is more than just story. Dicken’s has always had this unique art at his beck and call, and Oliver Twist is one of his most shining examples of creating and peopling a world that will leave readers simultaneously laughing, crying, and deeply moved.

The cast of villains in Oliver Twist is exceptional including the chilling and volatile Sykes, who serves to deliver the most horror to a story already verging on the catastrophic. The final scene between Sykes and Nancy, and Fagin’s clever manipulation of the two, is a testament to Dicken’s great understanding of situational realities (such as the desperation of Stockholm syndrome and the platitudes of those who appear overly loyal – i.e. Fagin.) Indeed, the cast of villains, large as it is, becomes a sort of sordid family for us and in the later part of the novel Oliver, with all of his haunted history, steps aside to let us see the workings of good and evil in these desperate albeit all too realistic phantoms. Dickens has a lot to say here about the very nature of good and evil, and the inability to separate the two using the social eye. Even more so, he has a lot for us to feel here and satisfies the yearning for drama in story while simultaneously plucking the audience’s still beating hearts out. Everything is saturated with selfishness and selflessness, enclosure and escape, guilt and justification, and above it all, the secret of Oliver’s birth which ties everything into one and spells what can only be a bittersweet ending. Dicken’s even thwarts his society further with forgiveness and a disdain of the entire illegitimate stigma and the sins of the fathers visited on the sons theory of the day. It’s powerful and realistic, vicious with vicarious terrors and an entire “there but for the grace of God go I” sentiment. One of Dicken’s most moving works, Oliver Twist is not to be missed for both the beauty of its engaging presentation and the messages it purveys.

*A Note on Edition: I listened to the Books on Tape audio version as read by John Lee. Lee captures the voice, intonations, and London accents of the characters perfectly and peoples this already vibrant world in a way that supersedes mere reading and becomes a production. A very talented voice actor, Lee’s rendition of this classic should not be missed.

– Frances Carden

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Elin's Reading Corner

Rating and Reading books

Book Review: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Set in 1800s England the young boy, Oliver Twist, tries to navigate through life without parents, in a world full of homelessness, criminals and unempathetic people.

Please, sir, I want some more.

Oliver Twist is supposedly a children’s book, which shocked me since there are explicit scenes in this novel that revolves around death and cruelty. Dickens wrote in a way that makes the reader anxious. As soon as something good happened to Oliver it was impossible to not think ‘Oh no’ because you just waited for the badness to happen. In this way, Dickens was incredibly successful when creating the narrative for Oliver. However, I couldn’t help but find the novel a little bit boring because sometimes the novel would feel repetitive. One good thing happens and soon after a bad thing happens. Other times Dickens would switch point of view and mention that it might be boring for the reader but that it could have significance later. If you know that it’s going to be boring to the point where you have to warn the reader, then why keep it in? Keep in mind, Oliver Twist is not a novel I would gravitate towards, it was a novel I had to read for my English module in order to prepare for an exam.

It is written through multiple point of views, for example Mr Bumble (the beadle) and Mrs Bumble, or Fagin’s (the Jew) perspective. If this is something that bothers you then you will be annoyed reading this novel. Whenever the reader is most curious about Oliver Twist, Dickens would switch the narrative to another character.

The language is, of course, old school. In my Penguin Edition the meaning of some words are in the end of the novel. I was too lazy to check the explanations and it worked incredibly well for me. This could mean that I missed out on some important aspect or a joke, but I’m okay with that. It would have been better if the explanations were on the same page as the footnote because then it would be easier to read rather than going back and forth and spending more time finding the right page for the explanation than reading. This is my laziness talking, so if this doesn’t bother you then I salute you.

Some people felt bad for me that I was reading Oliver Twist because they heard it’s difficult to get through but I felt the opposite. It was pretty easy. It is supposed to be a children’s book, so maybe that is why? Sometimes it felt unenjoyable to read but that’s because I had to read 60+ pages everyday to have it finished before the exam (that’s my fault, not the novel’s).

I really enjoyed the pictures in the novel, but I felt like the illustrator made the characters look too old. It was a nice break from all the death. Imagine my shock when I see a picture of Bill Sikes on the roof and then reading what happened after. I gasped.

I did enjoy it, but it’s definitely not my favourite.

Happy Reading ❤