FratFiles

• Save Paper

Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, in 1883, to show the reader things as they really are. He felt that the novel should be a message of social reform. One of its purposes was to promote reform of the abuses in workhouses. In no way does Dickens create a dream world. His imagination puts together a bad place during a bad time; an English workhouse just after the Poor Law Act of 1834 (Scott-Kilvert, 48).

In the first chapter of Oliver Twist, Dickens moves from comedy to pathos and from pathos to satire. He takes us from the drunken old woman to the dying mother to the hardened doctor. Such rapid switches help in all the later novels to hold together disparate effects, to provide variety and unity, and to give that double opportunity for comedy and pathos that Dickens admired in stage melodrama (Scott-Kilvert, 47). In this first chapter, Dickens also captures life and death in a single sentence, "Let me see the child, and die." (Dickens, 2). This sums up the mother's will to see the......

View the rest of this paper...

Approximate Word Count: 1644
Approximate Pages: 7 (250 words per double-spaced page)

Similar Essays

1. Oliver Twist
   

   Oliver Twist Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is one of the most widely recognized and beloved stories of all time. The popularity of the novel and its author has made the book a

2. Oliver Twist
   

   Oliver Twist Nineteenth century England brought in its wake not only industrialization but also social degradation. Dickens attacked the social evils of his times such as poor

3. Oliver Twist
   

   Oliver Twist Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist When you told us to read a book from the period which were we learning about I decided to read a book written by Charles Dickens because

4. Oliver Twist
   

   Oliver Twist Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, in 1883, to show the reader things as they really are. He felt that the novel should be a message of social reform. One of its

5. Oliver Twist: The Anchor Of Character Development
   

   Oliver Twist: The Anchor Of Character Development Oliver Twist: the Anchor of Character Development Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, centers itself around the life of the