Examine the portrayal of Life On The Streets in Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” and Swindells’ “Stone Cold”

Dickens and Swindell are both social commentators of their time. Both the books deal with the current issues of the time they were written. In both ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘Stone Cold’ the issue of homelessness is the main topic in the book.

Dickens wrote this book to enlighten the people of his time (Victorian) of what was going on in Britain.

Swindell writes with a moral purpose to deter young adults from taking up and living on the streets.

Before leaving home both Link and Oliver were treated very badly. Link had more emotional abuse rather than being hurt physically; he’d had his dad leaving home and a stepfather ‘Vince’ moving in who treated Link as if he was unwanted, by locking Link out, and more than anything, Link feels Vince changed his mum. He left home after his GCSE’s and lived on the streets; being 16 he wasn’t old enough to sign on for benefits but was classed as an adult so he wasn’t treated like a child who would be taken care of. Link stayed in Bradford until Christmas. He left after that because he knew too many people there. He found it embarrassing to beg from an old friend or a teacher. For Christmas day he went to Carol’s (his sister) house; he was given a sleeping bag, which I can agree with him, would have been horrible - because it meant he was thought of as homeless, and would never make anything out of himself. On the evening of Christmas day Vince and his Mum came round. The final straw that made Link leave Bradford is that Vince began getting at him and no one, not even Carol stuck up for him. Carol paid for a one-way ticket to London for him and hugged him Good Bye: He chose London to become anonymous.

Oliver was born into homelessness and the workhouse; his mother was an unknown woman in labour who had walked many miles to the workhouse, as there would be a doctor and a nurse there. His mother died in childbirth, making him an orphan with no known relations. He was sent to start out life in the ‘baby farm’. In the words of Charles Dickens ‘He fell into place at once – a parish child – the orphan of the workhouse – the humble, half starved drudge – to be cuffed and buffeted through the world – despised by all, and pitied by none’. A Baby Farm is a House where one person will bring up many babies until they are 9; the owner of the farm (in Oliver’s case this was Mrs. Mann) would get Sevenpence – halfpenny’s per child a week. ‘This was a very fair diet for a child, this diet could supply enough to overload a child’s stomach and make them feel uncomfortable’. ‘Mrs. Mann was a wise woman and used a very large proportion of the amount for her own needs’. So Oliver spent the first nine years of his life at the Baby Farm (which far less children left than had entered) being under fed and treated badly. On his ninth birthday Mr. Bumble the parish beadle came to collect Oliver to take him to the Workhouse: at this stage in his life Dickens describes Oliver as ‘A pale thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference’. Oliver had spent his ninth birthday in the coal shed with two other boys after being beaten.

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Mr. Bumble then took Oliver onto the next stage of his life, the workhouse; here Oliver was made to pick Oakum. Here his rations were three bowls of gruel a day, an onion twice a week and a roll on Sunday. After 7 or so months of this, one of the biggest boys in the dorm announced ‘if he didn’t get some more food soon he’d eat the boy in the next bed’. So all the boys drew lots to see who would go and ask for more; Oliver got the short straw. So after everyone had finished their gruel Oliver went up and said the famous line ‘Please, sir, I want some more’. After this Oliver was put in solitary confinement, publicly flogged and all the other boys were made to pray that they might never become like Oliver Twist. In an effort to get rid of their most troublesome child the parish board decided to give 5 pounds to anyone who would take him up as an apprentice. Mr. Gamfield a chimney sweep first offered to take him up but together pleas by Oliver and some members of the board agreeing that chimney sweeping is a horrible job and also 2 boys had already died under Mr. Gamfield, they decided that Oliver would not become a chimney sweep. Next Mr. Sowerberry the Undertaker came and took Oliver. When Oliver arrived at the house he was so hungry he ate the dog scraps at this point Dickens says ‘I wish some well fed philosopher, who’s meat and drink turns to gall within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the avidity with which Oliver tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself with the same relish.’

Mr. Sowerberry was a very nice man who already had an apprentice, Noah Claypole who was a Charity Boy (the class above orphan which Oliver was). Because Noah was a class higher than Oliver, Noah was horrible to him; but Oliver was Mr. Sowerberry’s favourite and made Oliver a ‘Mute’ as he was small and looked innocent. Noah hated Oliver even more for being the favourite and one day when Mr. Sowerberry was out Noah began getting at Oliver and calling Oliver’s mum a ‘A Regular Right-Down Bad’un’. Oliver then finally had had enough and tackled Noah to the ground; Mrs. Sowerberry came down (who didn’t like Oliver) and locked him in the cellar. When Mr. Sowerberry returned home he really actually didn’t want to punish Oliver but Mrs. Sowerberry made him hit Oliver with a cane. The next morning Oliver took off for London a place of which he’d heard the old men at the Work House say ‘No Lad of spirit need want in London’ and ‘The streets are paved with gold in London’. While running away Oliver ran past the old Baby Farm at the gate there was an old friend of Oliver’s called Dick. Dick told of how he was ill and going to die, then Oliver told him ‘I’m running away, they beat and ill-use me’; Dick then kissed Oliver, a touch of kindness he doesn’t meet for a long time afterwards. Oliver leaves for London to make his fortune.

Both books have brilliant descriptions of the hardships of life on the streets; in Swindell’s ‘Stone Cold’ a whole 3 pages is dedicated to the description of life on the street, whereas ‘Oliver Twist’ has mainly just short comments of what Oliver witnesses especially when he first gets to London, e.g. ‘Drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth’. Oliver on his way to London comes across many villages, which have signs up saying ‘Beggars will be arrested’ this shows how beggars and the poor were treated.

In ‘Stone Cold’ it tells very well of the hardships on the street. You could get your pack stolen or beaten up; ‘You might be spotted by a gang of lager louts on the lookout for someone to maim. And if they get carried away you can end up dead ’. But Link tells of how hard it is to get to sleep in the first place: stone floor, bruises from the stone, cold feet, depression, illness ‘and if you need the toilet you have to get up and take all your stuff with you so it cant get nicked. ‘There are psychos’ who’ll knife you for your pack’.

Both the boys receive genuine friendship and fake friendship.

The old lady who gives Oliver food while he’s going to London befriends him; she supplies genuine help, as her son is away at sea.

Nancy truly cares for Oliver, and in the end gives her life so that he may be happier; she first cares for Oliver as she doesn’t want Fagin to hit him as well as turn him into a thief like she was.

Jack Dawkins (or the ‘Artful Dodger’) befriends Oliver but not truthfully, he just uses Oliver so he can get more praises from Fagin.

Fagin uses Oliver and offers accommodation for work; after Oliver won’t work Fagin needs to keep Oliver, as he is being paid to by Monks (a long lost relative), who needs Oliver the out of the way so he can inherit a fortune.

Mr. Brownlow is a kind and loving man who is determined to take Oliver in and never stops trusting him. There are times when anyone else would give up hope on Oliver, but Brownlow never stops believing in Oliver and keeps looking for him. He even put out posters offering 5 guineas to anyone who can tell him anything about Oliver. Mr. Bumble sees this and goes to Brownlow and tells him Oliver used to be ‘a bad lot’, Brownlow replies with ‘I would gladly have given you treble the money, if it had been favorable to the boy’ showing he wants the boy to be good; he likes him so much.

Link also has his fair share of fake friends but not so many true to him:

Ginger is a true friend, he takes Link in and shows him the ropes; Link owes a lot to him.

Gail is a true friend to Link in most respects but really she never can be as she is never honest with him about herself and being a reporter; so although she is a very good friend she can never be a genuine friend.

Shelter is the worst type of person there is, he plays the part of a loving caring person who wants to help, but underneath he is a killer who doesn’t care at all.

Swindell very cleverly used a way of writing that is very rarely used. He used a type called ‘Dual Narrative’ this is where you hear the story from 2 points of view. In Stone Cold both these voices are telling an autobiography (this is very obvious in Link’s case as one of his opening lines is ‘I’ll tell the story of my fascinating life’). Shelter’s is written in a journal form (also auto-biography). Autobiography is a very good way of telling a story as you can get a character’s raw feelings.

Dickens uses a third person way of telling the story, as if an on-looker is telling it rather than the actual person who experienced it; this is good for Dickens as he is a Social Commentator. It allows the author to put in his own comments and opinions of situations, but it disallows the author to show how the actual character feels in a situation.

Swindells story is also written in past tense (‘I’ll tell you the story of my fascinating life’). Doing this it allows him to not need to tell you everything that is happening at present as this could side track from the plot.

Throughout Stone Cold, slang and very harsh, angry, even violent language is used: Link is very upset through all his ordeals. Also with the book being based in London most of the character are written in the cockney dialect. Humour is used in Swindells ‘Stone Cold’ for Shelter. He jokes, ‘Link the Stink’ and ‘The Camden Horizontals’-referring to his dead army (his murdered victims) lying down under the floor boards. Swindells uses short, direct ‘get to the point’ sentences, as this is what the modern reader wants; more is left to the imagination.

Charles Dickens chose rather not to use aggressive and violent language, as you have to remember that this book is written for all the family in the Victorian age. But Dickens still uses dialect for each character and also slang is used a lot (shown in ‘Bad’un’ and ‘Work’us’), so it is written as the people of that time would speak. Compared to Swindells short direct sentences, Dickens uses long very descriptive sentences, leaving nothing to the imagination. Take for example the first line in the book is 7 lines long!

‘The Dodger had vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of small boys and tossing them down areas, while Charley Bates exhibited some very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by pilfering diver apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides, and thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious, that they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every direction’: this shows the style of writing in the Victorian times. I will now translate this into modern language making it easier to compare to a caption from ‘Stone Cold’.

‘The Dodger had a nasty way of pulling the caps off the small boys and throwing them on the floor, while Charley Bates, Showing off he was a thief, stole apples and onions from the market, and hid them in his pockets which were so daftly large that his clothes looked out off proportion’. Now lets look at this compared to a quote from ‘Stone Cold’.

‘He’s about fifty for a start, and he’s one of these old dudes that wear cool gear and try to act young and it doesn’t work because they’ve got grey hair and fat bellies and they just make themselves look pathetic’. We can see from this comparison that Dickens looks at the details probably most other Authors would overlook; Swindell writes the typical details of how people look: but this is how Link would talk so it is no less valuable.

Swindell’s book as I said at the beginning is written with a moral, ‘to deter young adults not to take to the streets’. So the book is quite short and has only one story line. In no way does Swindell glamorise the streets, and he never lets Link into a life of crime (but Oliver goes straight into a criminal gang); also Link never gets into drink or drugs: all these precautions are to make sure that the homeless life does not seem attractive in any way. ‘Stone Cold’ also doesn’t end with a happy ending. This is to show to the reader that once you are on the streets, it hard to get off. It also leaves the future of Link in the hands of the reader.

Dickens is writing to mainly entertain, so he has to bring extraordinary coincidence and exciting events into the story; so Oliver is taken in to a life of crime, really for entertainment but also to show what street society and poverty was like at that time. Oliver Twist was written in 53 chapters, it was published in a weekly magazine (a chapter a week) and was the ‘soap’ of the day; this is why the story has many twists and turns (example – Mr. Bumble’s Romantic life), as do the soaps of nowadays have many sub-plots. Dickens was writing to enlighten the public of what was going on in the world rather than with a moral, as the people who would be reading this would not even think about living on the street. ‘Oliver Twist’ does have a happy ending: the bad guys die and Oliver is reunited with his family, because after reading the story a Victorian audience would expect a happy ending; but Nancy does die bringing some sorrow to the story.

Dickens put sympathy in the minds of his reader without them knowing; he tackled a difficult subject by writing an entertaining and gripping story about it. Modern soap operas still do take on current affairs issues to get very emotional stories, as some people can relate to these. Gail in ‘Stone Cold’ was also trying to find an emotional story to give to her readers but ended up being caught up in a very dangerous and life changing experience.

I believe Gail began doing the story mainly for money, but as the story continues she begins to get closer to the dangers and horrors of life on the street and she wants to expose the tragedies which are happening; but she can never leave her true life behind.

Dickens writes very descriptively with long paragraphs describing each characters’ looks and features. He does this, as there was no television. With TV, programs need no descriptions as you can see the characters. So working as the soap of the day he needs every reader to have the same image in his or her head. This style of writing is not modern like the way ‘Stone Cold’ is written which is done with very short and few descriptions, and frankly leaving more to the imagination and for you to decide (also Swindell even leaves the ending of the book up to you). I prefer to read the modern style (Stone Cold), as I find I begin to lose interest in the long descriptiveness of Dicken’s style.

Even though Dickens novel is full of extraordinary coincidences and events they feel at home in this book: whereas the few ‘over the top’ happenings are not well suited in ‘Stone Cold’.

I felt after reading both books, Oliver Twist was the best, even though I found it harder to read. I feel I didn’t enjoy Stone Cold as much as it got too depressing and emotional. I look for enjoyment in a book rather than a moral and meaning.

Ben Ford 10I