This book I had read a few decades ago, but it was fun to read it again.

In the story, Oliver’s mother dies right after he was born in a small town seventy miles from London. Nobody knew the mother, and since she wasn’t wearing a ring, it made the baby unwanted.

Until Oliver is eight years old, he stays in a child farm where he is barely fed and kept. When he turns eight, he is put to work in a workhouse. When he asks for more food, he is punished for it. Then, he is sent as an apprentice to a coffin maker by the parish.

The coffin-maker’s wife Mrs. Sowerberry and his other apprentice Noah Claypole mistreat him. Unable to take more abuse, Oliver begins walking toward the city of London. When he almost reaches London he meets a young man, The Artful Dodger, Jack Dawkins, who feeds him and introduces him to another man named Fagin whose job is using boys like Oliver in a thievery ring.

When Oliver, who is not aware that his job is being a pickpocket, is caught, Mr. Brownlow--the man who was being robbed--pities him and takes him home to care for him as he has fallen ill. After Oliver is well, one day Mr. Brownlow sends him to the city on an errand.

Unfortunately, the nine-year-old Oliver is caught by Fagin and is locked up in an old house. When Fagin lets Oliver out so, as a child, he can help the other thieves break into a house, but the plan doesn’t work as the servants wake up and catch Oliver while the others flee and Oliver is shot with a bullet during the incident.

The family, Maylies, who shot him pities him and takes care of him until he heals, while Fagin wonders what happened to Oliver.

While Fagin and his gang try to find Oliver, one of the girls with Fagin named Nancy understands that a man named Monks paid Fagin to turn the boy into a thief. Nancy secretly decides to help Oliver. Meanwhile, with the Maylies, Oliver learns to read and write and also connects with Mr. Brownlow again. Because Nancy tells what she knows to Rose Maylie about Monks’s plot, her lover Bill Sikes kills her.

Then, Brownlow finds and brings Monks to Brownlow’s home as he knew him from before. Monks’s real name is Edward Leeford, and he wants Oliver out of the way, since Monks knew that Oliver is Monks’s father’s child and that of a young woman (Agnes, whose name the readers learn at the end of the novel) with whom Brownlow was also in love. Monks is possibly Oliver’s older brother. As Monks’s father and mother were separated and the father died in Europe, Monks’s mother destroyed his will that possibly acknowledged Oliver and left him part of his estate.

Monks has to admit everything and Oliver gets what’s left of his inheritance. Also, Mr. Brownlow adopts him.

As to the bad guys, Sikes hangs himself accidentally. Fagin is arrested and hanged, and Monks dies in prison.

Mob mentality is an important theme in Oliver but the main theme is the powerlessness of women and children who repeatedly face cruelty, especially institutional cruelty to children who are mostly orphans, which also points to the importance of proper upbringing.

The contrast of kind people to the cruel ones makes the story interesting as well as the brilliant characterization and satirical yet stunning storytelling of the author.

Charles Dickens, (1812 - 1870), who was an author, journalist, editor, illustrator and social commentator. His most famous books include Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities.

It is a classic and Dickens's style is one of a kind that would enrich any reader and writer.

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Created Oct 31, 2020 at 1:55pm • Submit your own review...