This first section of Oliver Twist is especially focused on the failures of
the systems in place to take care of the poor and helpless particularly orphans. The narrator, with his deft use of sarcasm,
shows how little those entrusted with Oliver's care actually care
about him. The importance that food takes on in this opening
section of the novel recalls the way that government policies toward
the poor can alter society's attitudes.
Oliver Twist is born into a workhouse, but seems unlikely to survive
at first. At nine, Oliver is too old to stay in the orphanage, so Mr.
Bumble comes to get him and take him back to the workhouse
where he was born. The boys, in the workhouse, get so hungry that
one threatens to eat the weakest of them if he doesn't get more
gruel, so they draw straws to decide who will have to ask for more.
Oliver is chosen. After finishing his gruel that evening, he approaches
the master and asks for more. The master is shocked, strikes a blow
at Oliver and calls for Mr. Bumble. Mr. Bumble tells the members of
the board, who are outraged. They decide to offer five pounds and
Oliver Twist to anyone who will take him off of their hands.
When the orphan Oliver Twist plaintively says, "Please, sir, I want
some more," the workhouse guardians are so horrified at this
rebellion that Oliver has to be sent away before the other orphans
can start getting ideas. And yet what Oliver asks for is very modest:
another bowl of gruel. Dickens describes the workhouse diet as
"three thin meals of gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and
half a roll on Sundays." There is a little comic exaggeration here, but
not much. The workhouse diet was truly appalling; it was part of a
deliberate attempt to discourage people from applying for
assistance. In fact many people in Victorian England did starve to
death rather than go there.
Dickens criticized the 1834 poor law in many different ways within
the first five chapters. He does this firstly by cleverly portraying
the Victorians attitudes towards the poor. He does this in chapter 1
by referring to Oliver as 'the item of mortality' suggesting how
lowly his position in society is. Also the difficulty of Oliver's birth
and the fact his mother dies, gives us some idea of the dangers of
child birth in Victorian society and the amount of negligence his
mother receives from the surgeon. Another way he shows the
attitudes towards the poor is by describing the unfeeling and clearly
drunk nurse who was 'tasting in the corner' instead of taking care of
Oliver and his dying mother.
Dickens characterization is another form of criticism he gives
the poor law. He gives the characters names which reflect the type
of person they are and the lives they lead.
Dickens uses a lot of really sharp irony in Oliver Twist to satirize the
various institutions (the parish workhouse system, the justice system,
the poor laws, etc.) that he thought were inhumane and unjust.
The main literary device I noticed in the first chapters of Oliver
Twist is irony. Charles Dickens gives accounts of the lower class
people of London, and he satirically describes their living conditions.
Oliver and his fellow orphans are said to be “without the
inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing,” when
truthfully the young children are starving and wearing rags.
As a form of irony, Dickens shows the two-faced society that is
London in the Victorian Era. The Board thinks that Mrs. Mann is a
wonderful caretaker for the orphans; however, when viewed from
the lower class perspective of the orphans, Mrs. Mann is abusive and
greedy.
Even in Oliver asking for more gruel, there is irony because the
helpless, starving orphan is treated incredulously for trying to
improve his conditions. When, realistically, the healthy, well-fed
board members are the people who should have been punished for
making the poor live in such conditions.
By using irony and humor, Dickens explores the social conditions of
that time especially for the poor and unprivileged. He has a critical
view of the workhouses, the poor laws and the poor houses. For
instance, he talks about the workhouse and says "So they establish
the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative of being
starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of
it". This shows the heavy irony which he has used. Besides, when he
describes how the children are very hungry by saying "they would sit
staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have
devoured the very bricks of which it was composed", he shows the
dark humor. By exaggerating the scene of Oliver's asking for more,
Dickens is telling gaps. So through the very important scenes in
Oliver Twist and by using irony and humor and critical attack, the
author demonstrates the suffering and sadness that takes place in
the Victorian age.
The theme of "Poverty" is obviously related to the theme of "Society
and Class." But while the "Society and Class" theme is concerned
with showing how the social class system is basically just invented by
society to justify the status quo, Dickens is also very concerned in
showing just how miserable the lower classes really were. With
Oliver Twist, he doesn’t shy away from depicting the conditions of
the poor in all their misery with gritty realism.
Poverty is a prominent concern in Oliver Twist. Throughout the
novel, Dickens enlarges on this theme, describing how the whole
rows of houses are on the point of ruin. In an early chapter, Oliver
attends a pauper's funeral with Mr. Sowerberry and sees a whole
family crowded together in one miserable room.
This misery makes Oliver's few encounters with charity and love
more poignant. The apparent plague of poverty that Dickens
describes also conveyed to his middle-class readers how much of the
London population was stricken with poverty and disease.
Nonetheless, in Oliver Twist he delivers a somewhat mixed message
about social caste and social injustice. Oliver's illegitimate
workhouse origins place him at the bottom of society; as an orphan
without friends, he is routinely despised. His "sturdy spirit" keeps him
alive despite the torment he must endure. Noah Claypole, a charity
boy like Oliver, is idle, stupid, and cowardly; Sikes is a thug; Fagin
lives by corrupting children; and the Artful Dodger seems born for a
life of crime. Many of the middle-class people Oliver encounters—
Mrs. Sowerberry, Mr. Bumble, and the savagely hypocritical
"gentlemen" of the workhouse board, for example—are, if anything,
worse.
The story's central character Oliver was the perfect vehicle to use in
exploring the concept of poverty and social class because he
symbolized both classic lower class poverty while at the same time
coming across as appealing, innocent and even loveable to some. As
the story progresses we find Oliver is joined by fellow social outcasts
including the common thieves Fagin, Nancy and Bill Sikes.
Dickens employs a heavy use of symbolism to surround these lower
class characters wherever they go. They duck and dive through the
middle class crowds looking to empty them of the contents of their
back pockets. They live in filthy run down over-populated slums
and seem to be followed by dark nights and dramatic weather
wherever they go. Meanwhile we mostly see upper working class
characters like Bumble, head of the orphanage, walking on the
finer side of the slums while middle class characters like Mr
Brownlow, Oliver's gentleman saviour, always seem to be walking
in the sunshine.
In this story we see that poverty and social class are deemed to be
one and the same thing. The poor are on the bottom rung of society
while the working or the born wealthy appear on various rungs up
the ladder. Though this may seem a natural assumption to make,
those who are born into middle class families will not necessarily
remain wealthy throughout their lives the same as those who are
born into poverty will not necessarily die penniless.