"How does Charles Dickens in the early part of Oliver Twist use the character Oliver to present his view of an unfair and corrupt world?"

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Sabrina Bagria                                  

“How does Charles Dickens in the early part of Oliver Twist use the character Oliver to present his view of an unfair and corrupt world?”

   In the Victorian times, life for some people was an unfair and corrupt world. In the novel “Oliver Twist”, this is shown in many ways. This novel is about a young, innocent boy called “Oliver” who is brought up in a hard disadvantaged world. The conditions were extremely cruel, especially for the poor and the young orphans such as Oliver Twist who were sent to work in the workhouses at a very young age. Due to Oliver’s mother dying after giving birth and Oliver’s father not being around this made Oliver an orphan, alone to face the unkindness things in his future.

 

   Charles Dickens chooses to have a young character Oliver Twist in his novel, because he was innocent, naive and harmless. A lot of things happened in Oliver’s life things which weren’t his fault. Oliver has a lot of courage and is a tough boy inside, because throughout his life he has had horrible experiences and has coped with them on his own. In the workhouse the boys were starving they had very little to eat many children broke down or died of hunger but not Oliver he was a strong boy mentally and physically. It wasn’t Oliver’s fault that he was brought up in a workhouse, he was an orphan and had to do strictly what the beadle and Mrs Mann told him to do.

   Workhouses were for the poorest in society, who could no longer afford to live outside. The orphans were under strict discipline in the workhouses which had to be obeyed. They had little food which was the same everyday and they worked a lot. In 1834, a new Poor Law was introduced. Some people welcomed it because they believed it would: reduce the cost of looking after the poor, take beggars off the streets and encourage poor people to work hard to support themselves.

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In the opening chapters of Oliver Twist, Dickens attacks the New Poor Law enacted in 1834. Previously it had been the burden of the parishes to care for the poor through alms and taxes, for the poor to be put in a workhouse was more of a punishment than charity because they were treated with no respect. The new law banded parishes together into unions, each union had a workhouse, and all those seeking relief were required to become inmates in the workhouse. The new law made seeking relief as undesirable as possible. The workhouse was little more than a prison ...

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