Collegamenti Oliver Twist e Rosso Malpelo

       

 ROSSO MALPELO 1881                                                                               OLIVER TWIST 1837

☝                                                                                                                                  ☝

SIMILARITIES

orphans

poor

hard-working in bad conditions

suffer abuse

a deep loneliness

the adults are far away and indifferent

relations based on bullying and extreme poverty

selfishness and ignorance as consequences of poverty 

their destiny is written in their names

DIFFERENCES

A resigned child                                                                                 a strong-willed rebel

He dies at the end                                                                            He's adopted at the end

Through the story of Rosso Malpelo, Verga expresses all his pessimism, his hopeless conception of life. Malpelo does not rebel against the injustices he suffers because they seem inevitable to him: if he dreams of rebelling, he immediately returns to what is real and unchangeable from his point of view. The pessimism expressed by Verga in Rosso Malpelo is absolute, it knows no way out, it leads him to think that never having been born would have been better.

Instead, Oliver lives happily with Mr. Brownlow as his adopted son. Dickens is optimistic. In the midst of corruption and degradation, the essentially passive Oliver remains pure-hearted; he steers away from evil when those around him give in to it, and like in a fairy-tale , he eventually receives his reward – leaving for a peaceful life in the country, surrounded by kind friends. On the way to this happy ending, Dickens explores the kind of life an outcast, orphan boy could expect to lead in 1830s London.

Dickens criticizes the system of workhouses and he denounces the situation and the living conditions in those horrible places.He thought that all the injustices and the violence suffered by the poor occured in the city and that are the effect of it.So he idealized the countryside, because in his opinion it was free from poverty and ugliness.

Verga talks about the living conditions in the countryside, especially in very small towns or villages. He doesn't openly criticize the system, but he describes it as it is with detachment and the total impersonality of the narrator. In contrast to Verga, Dickens criticizes the system by exaggerating some aspects of the descriptions and by attacking single people, more than the entire system.

IRONY

In both texts it stimulates critical reflection on the reader's part through a series of more or less evident contrasts. Its aim is to make the reader aware of the distortions, injustices and contradictions to be found in the reality that is being described.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

Verga speaks in the third person, but it's clear that he does not share the community's point of view.We can find a kind of anonymous narrator, but he does not subscribe its point of view. This technique reflects the one of estrangement.

Dickens uses a third-person narrator who is omniscient, but he assumes the points of view of various characters- In the extract Oliver wants some more he adopts Oliver's point of view

CONTRASTS in OLIVER TWIST

the boys' world and the adults' world

the poor and the rich

thinness(hunger) and  fatness

submission(fear) and power

THE USE OF PARATAXIS

Rosso Malpelo- a marked use of parataxis

Oliver wants some more- the syntax is discontinuous and broken, acquiring a kind of paratactical form

The purpose is to create an atmoshere of suspense or give the narrative a tone that is firm, rigorous, absolute. It doesn't admit any exception.