Themes in Oliver Twist

 

THEMES in Oliver Twist

The powerlessness of children Oliver and the other children are controlled and over powered by wealthy and powerful adults. Poor children are forced to work in the so-called workhouses, where they are treated badly and are constantly starving, or they turn to crime, risking to be caught and taken to prison or to be killed.

The powerlessness of women At the time, women were treated as second class citizens. Like children, women, too, are at the mercy of the more powerful in society. This is especially exemplified in Nancy, who ends up giving her life in her attempt to act against the men who hold power over her.

Poverty Dickens focuses on the terrible effects of poverty on human beings. In Chapter Two Oliver asks for more gruel. He is “desperate with hunger.” He approaches the master and says, “Please, sir, I want some more.” The staff is genuinely shocked. The master hits Oliver with the ladle and the beadle is astonished. The reaction of the adults, reveals the dehumanization of deprived children who are not helped by anyone.

Crime The conditions of 1830s London led naturally to crime. The novel presents a close picture of how one particular criminal gang operates. It’s composed of a lot of  types and personalities. Fagin lives by corrupting children and Sikes is a thug, a housebreaker and burglar. The Artful Dodger is someone who, if born into a better class, would have done exceptionally well, given his high intelligence, creativity, and sunny personality, but, as things are, has been born for a life of crime. Nancy is there because she has nowhere else to go. She’s an essentially good person forced to go with the way the wind blows but finally risking, and forfeiting, her life in her effort to do the right thing.

The Law The novel is also about the effects on the poor of British laws in the 19th Century, as industrialization accelerated. The reasons behind the Poor Law Act passed in 1834 were basically good– the creation of workhouses as a way of dealing with the homeless: giving them food and shelter. The reality, however, was the confinement of the poor in places where they were starved and mistreated with no training or education or any hope for a way out of the trap they were in, intended partly as an answer to the growing crime rate.

On the level of the law as it applied to individuals, we see, in the treatment of Oliver when he is suspected of theft, that individuals of his supposed class had no chance, It was only through the intervention of a middle-class gentleman that Oliver was spared from being flung into prison.

Good versus Evil ‘Good versus evil’ is the one theme that is common to most works of literature.In Oliver Twist there are characters who are completely bad – Fagin and Bill Sikes. There are also characters who are completely good, like Oliver and Rose. Dickens gives us another layer of characters – those who should be models of good, the people who occupy high positions because they are trusted to be social beacons. The reality, however, is that when Dickens shines a light on them we find that they are corrupt, using their positions of trust to line their own pockets at the expense of those they are charged to protect. We also see that those who make decisions about the parish poor, and starve them, eat and drink like royalty.

City versus countryside In Oliver Twist, the city and the countryside each take on symbolic meaning, and stand in clear dichotomy. The city is corrupt, dirty, and seedy, while the country is pure, clean, and healthy. It is in the city that Oliver is forced into immorality, while it is in the country that Oliver is able to recover his health, to get an education, to find peace and happiness, and to live morally. 

This dichotomy is likely related to the danger of the mob mentality that is so prevalent in the novel. In the city, where everyone is so close together, it seems to always be the immoral contingent that wins out and drowns out the few moral voices - just as in a mob the voice of reason is always overwhelmed. In the country, conversely, the people are not a mob, but a community.