Charls dickens: Oliver

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How does Dickens show the poverty and mistreatment surrounding Oliver?

Oliver Twist is a novel by Charles Dickens. It is about a boy who lived in the unfair society of Victorian England. From the very start, the reader can see that lower class people were treated unfairly and rejected by everyone as part of the community. There were no benefits for poor people or people who couldn’t get jobs, so they had to get by however they could, even if that meant breaking the law. Dickens may have wanted to highlight the poverty and mistreatment so he could change people’s perspectives and maybe the way people lived.

 Even at the very start of his life, Oliver is born in poor conditions, his mother dies giving birth to him in a workhouse, with only a drunk nurse and an uncaring parish surgeon to look after him now. For the whole of his life Oliver is bound to be seen as an obstacle in everyone else’s life “ It is very likely that it will be troublesome”, Oliver is referred to as ‘it’ making him seem more like an object that a person- something that will just get in the way. As one of the poorest people in England, it was possible that Oliver was one of the most mistreated too. This is of no coincidence, as Oliver had no importance and no family to love him either. “Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan… perhaps he would have cried the louder.”  This quote explains that orphans are treated even worse than just normal poor people. The atmosphere for Oliver as he was born would have been very gloomy as the parish didn’t care about him, the midwife was drunk, but worst of all, his mother had just died. This paragraph is narrated with a grim but Ironic tone “Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of churchwardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.”  The Irony shows Dickens’ anger and the grim tone shows his empathy.

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In the next chapter it is explained that its Oliver’s birthday, but we find him “locked in a coal cellar” having just been beaten because he is hungry. The woman looking after Oliver is appropriately named ‘Mrs. Mann’, this is specifically chosen by Dickens because she is very aggressive and manly in the way she treats the children, Dickens does this to give a sense of irony. She may also have been named this so the reader gets a good image in their head of what she looks like. Mrs. Mann is very 2-faced as the way she talks ...

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