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Introduction

Research Topic What is on Charles Dickens's mind? Key Questions: * What issues stand out in Charles Dickens's writing? * Why does Charles Dickens highlight these issues? Research Notes: Oliver Twist (Novel) Author: Charles Dickens Written time: 1837 ISSUES: Contrast and conflicts between poor and rich people * Oliver Twist, a poor, nameless orphan boy. He is forced to suffer the indignities of starvation, brutal treatment, and is damned to life in a workhouse. * "For more!" said Mr. Limbkins. "Do I understand that Oliver asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?" "That boy will be hung," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. "I know that boy will be hung." * They established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or are quick one out of it. * "Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless, starving wretch to lay him down and die. ...read more.

Middle

The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell. All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. * Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. * "If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?" Self-improvement and hope * Carton begins the story as a drunken and dissolute barrister. * He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood looking back at her. ...read more.

Conclusion

"What of that" said Scrooge's nephew. His wealth is of no use to him. He didn't do any good with it. He doesn't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking-that he is ever going to benefit us with it" Self-improvement and hope * Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. He was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! * Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. * He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well. * He was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain. ?? ?? ?? ?? ...read more.

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