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Oliver Twist is author Charles Dickens's second novel and was published
in 1837–39. It was the first novel which protagonist was a young boy, one
of the first examples of social novel.
The novel analyses the 19th century english society's evils: poverty, child
labour, urban crime and hypocrisy typical of the Victorian society.
The novel is settled mainly in London, a.d. 1830. Oliver was a poor boy of
unknown parents, his mother died while having his childbirth in a
workhouse; an old maid gave the newborn to the priest Bumble, who
baptised him and gave him the name of Oliver Twist.
The children at the workhouse suffered hunger and were ill-treated by the
house's chieves. Oliver was later sold to an undertaker, but in a short time
he ran away to London. There he fell into the hands of a gang of young
pickpockets, who tried to make a thief out of him. He was saved by an old
gentleman called Brownlow, but the gang reached him and kidnapped him.
Oliver was forced to commit a burglary; during the job he was shot and
wounded. At last a middle-class family found him and adopted him; there
he knew kindness and love. Eventually, after some investigations about
Oliver's parents, it is discovered that he has noble origins. The older
half-brother, worried about the new heir of their father's heritage, tried to
ruin Oliver but he was arrested with Sikes, the gang's chief.
Based on the idea that poverty was due to lazyness, workhouses were
meant to be dreadful places in which the poor would strive to get better
and to escape from their miserable conditions.
Many Dickens' novels are greatly influenced by his chidhood; from the age
of 12 he was forced to work in the factories in inhuman conditions. The
main aim of Dickens is to make people conscious about the reality of the
poor who lived in the slums, among cruelty and crime.