Oliver Twist Essays - English-language Films,

Oliver Twist Charles Dickens, probably one of the most popular writer and humorist of his century was born at Landport in Portsea, on February seventh, 1812. His father, John Dickens was a clerk in a navy-pay office, and mother Elizabeth Borrow, along with his eight other siblings, which the other two died in infancy, lived in Portsea, and were fairly poor. Because of the arising poverty in his life time, Charles Dickens was forced to work as a child laborer when he was just twelve year of age. Although Charles Dickens faced many challenges in his young life, his love for writing dominated all of the challenges he faced in life. Perhaps, his book, Oliver Twist, was about, well, mainly about his life as a child. Although Dickens wrote Oliver Twist while he was finishing The Pickwick Papers and editing Bentley's Miscellany, he managed to make the novel remarkable for it's clarity of purpose and it's sustained intensity(The Cambridge guide to Literature in English; Ian Ousby). The story that lies behind the infamous story of a little orphan boy named Oliver is very different from his other previous novels. Other critics say that Oliver Twist is barely a novel, but more as a satire or sarcasm about the victorian era. First of all, the story begins with a young woman who gave birth to a boy whom they named Oliver. The young woman did not even have any time to hold her new born, but just in time to kiss him, then shortly died after that, the boy on the other hand survived, not knowing what kind of twist and turn his life would take as he grows and faces the real world. As the boy grew in a very vain and cruel environment, his turns in life was not going too good either. Having the parish not enough facilities for his care, Oliver was forced to move and work as a child laborer and in the care of a very greedy woman named Mrs. Mann. Child labor was very common back then, and there was an actual law that was set to eliminate poverty by starving the poor, that was called the Poor Law of 1834.(The Life of Charles Dickens;John Forester) Dickens used this law in his story to satarize the living in London, in the 19th century, and probably because he experienced child labor when he was growing up, and therefore tried to emphazise the way he lived back then. As soon as Oliver turned nine years old, Mr. Bumble, the beadle of the parish which where Oliver was born, took Oliver with him to work as an oakum picker. But because of the increasing of poverty, Oliver and the other workers were only fed little pieces of food. In the midst of starvation, one of Oliver's friend pursued Oliver to ask for some more food, and by that, Oliver was taken to a dark room for a week for his "disrespectfulness." Perhaps, Dickens was trying to tell the readers how the life of a poor boy be so unimportant to those who dominates him, and thus the other children living in povety also. This challenge of Oliver's life is just preparing him for the other eventful changes in his immediate future. Soon after, a reward was posted on a board for anyone who would like to take an orphan boy to their care, and will be offered five-pounds. Mr. Gamfield was willing to accept the boy for a bribe of five-pounds, but because of his bad publicity, meaning he had already lost the lives of several of his apprentices, he was told to be paid three- pounds and ten-shillings, instead of the five-pounds that was promised. Mr. Gamfield agreed to the proposition, and so did the board. Later, brought before a local judge for approval that Oliver was to be cared by Mr. Gamfield, the near sighted judge, searching for his ink bottel, caused him to look at the frightened face of Oliver, and then quickly realized that he would do something wrong if he let Oliver go with Mr. Gamfield, dropped and refused to sign the papers of approval, and told Oliver to return to the workhouse where the offering of five-pounds to anyone that