Oliver Twist [Annotated]

Oliver Twist is a Newgate Novel. At the time, Dickens had nurtured, both as a reader and a writer, a certain fascination with crime and secret life. Newgate fiction was accordingly a perfect outlet for such interests being a wave of novels and literary works that placed criminality at the center of their plots. But Dickens was a social reformer too; an author who sought to move his readers not only to sympathy but also to action. Accordingly, the novel voices his own views in regard to child labor, workhouses, and the circumstances of the poor. The judicial order was another important issue which Dickens had attempted to amend by pointing out, with painful clarity, the cruel executions of minors even for slight offences like theft. A psychoanalytical reading of the novel reveals, for instance, the use of gallows-humor among the juvenile gang members as a defense mechanism against the anxiety of death, which emphasizes the widespread of death at an early age under such dreadful circumstances. The novel is a patchwork of genres. It can be read either as a satire about law and the workhouses, or as a Gothic tale following the progress of Nancy, who like a typical Gothic heroin, is trapped in the darkness of London's slums under the influence of strong and grim men like Bill and with premonitions about her own death. At the same time, the book adopts a sentimental tone in its depiction of the distress and hardships of the virtuous; social Realism to reflect the appalling circumstances of the poor; and the Victorian Melodrama in its portrayal of the villains as thoroughly wicked, and the heroes as spotlessly good. The reason behind this rapid alteration between genres, Dickens argues, is its validity in everyday life where sorrows can be followed by immense joy within a quarter of an hour. When it comes to characterization, Oliver himself is hardly a creditable character; a cry-baby at best in constant need of help and saving. But this particular type of portrayal has its specific end. Oliver is a two dimensional hero-figure who must overcome obstacles on his path to salvation. He is thus used by Dickens to emphasize those traits which the author had wanted to cultivate among the gradually degenerating Victorian society, namely innocence, purity, and goodness. Nancy is practically the only character who resists the novel's allegorical classification of characters as entirely good or utterly bad by dint of a considerable psychological depth that was exclusively given her.

This is Dickens. This is brilliant.

After sitting on by TBR list for far too long, I finally put the time aside to read Oliver Twist. For as much as Dickens has always fascinated me, and despite my love and tradition of rereading The Christmas Carol, I had never given an honest effort to reading Dickens’s other work. I’m happy I decided to start with Twist because I feel like it served as a perfect starter guide for Dickens: all of the plot twists, expansive cast of characters, themes, wonderful descriptions of foggy London, without the length and time commitment of other members of my TBR (David Copperfield, Bleak House). While Oliver himself was a perfectly fine main character, the supporting cast in this novel really stole the show. From the tragic Nancy to the scheming Fagin, the hypocrisy of Mr. Bumble, and the villainous Bill Sikes, the cast of characters were constantly engaging and helped entertain, even when the plot was not directly dealing with Oliver, or at least did not seem to. All in all, I flew through the story, and I am looking forward to tackling the next Dickens classic off my TBR: Tale of Two Cities next?