Oliver Twist is the title character of Charles Dickens's second novel, serialized between 1837 and 1839. Born in a workhouse to a mother who dies in childbirth, Oliver spends his early years in institutional cruelty and near-starvation, famously asking for a second helping of gruel with the line Please, sir, I want some more, an act of defiance that gets him sold into an apprenticeship. He eventually runs away to London, where he falls in with a gang of child pickpockets run by the criminal fence Fagin and the violent housebreaker Bill Sikes, before being taken in by a kind gentleman, Mr. Brownlow, and eventually revealed through a tangle of coincidences to be of respectable birth. Dickens used Oliver's ordeal to expose the brutality of England's workhouse system and child criminal underworld under the Poor Law, and the novel remains one of the most widely read works of Victorian social criticism.
Facts
Narrative RoleOrphan protagonist of Charles Dickens's second novel Oliver Twist, who escapes a workhouse for London and falls in with a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by Fagin. 1 Defining TraitHis story exposes the cruel treatment of orphans in England in the mid-nineteenth century, an early example of the social novel satirizing child labor and street children. 1 Narrative role (class) Connections
Sources
1. Oliver Twist (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead section, paragraph 1
The story follows orphan Oliver Twist, who, after being raised in a workhouse, escapes to London, where he meets a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin, discovers the secrets of his parentage, and reconnects with his remaining family.
Lead section, paragraph 2
Oliver Twist unromantically portrays the sordid lives of criminals and exposes the cruel treatment of the many orphans in England in the mid-19th century.
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