Analysis of ¨Oliver Twist¨

Analysis of ¨Oliver Twist¨

INTRODUCTION

Oliver Twist is a book written by Charles Dickens in 1837. It is the story of a boy (Oliver) who suffered the loss of his mother at the moment of the birth. This boy became an orphan since his first day of life. This was the main cause of all his problems because he did not have someone to “cover his back”. Charles Dickens saw in this book the perfect opportunity to make a protest about the social, economic, and political issues that England faced at that time. Some of those problems were: poverty, social discrimination, mistreat towards the poor, robberies, old people taking advantage of children. Orphanhood, fights for claiming money, etc. It is very important to mention that society has not changed at all since those years because nowadays it is very common to see those problems. This book was a great lesson for us because through the book we realized that there are great and wiser ways to protest against injustices. Usually, people make parades in order to argue against a problem, but writing a book in order to show discomfort regarding a specific issue is even better and effective. In the following pages, we wrote our analysis about the whole book. Besides, we interpret the situations seen in the book in nowadays´ situations as well.

ANALYSIS OF OLIVER TWIST

In this book the author wanted to show us the terrible situation where a single mother suffers a lot because of society´s thoughts. Also, most of the time children suffer the consequences about the things adults do. Not all the people are going to take care of an orphan like parents may do. A single mother can take bad decisions while she is facing problems, for that reason children suffer aftermath. The most important thing in family is not only to have a lot of money or a good job, but also to love and take care each other. Moreover, most of the young people are complaining about food, cloth and everything they have instead of being thankful with God about the necessary things they have because there are people that are so poor that they can´t imagine. Orphans are obligated to work hard or to work like an adult in order to survive. There are adults that like to take advantages of orphans just because they are alone, or they want someone to help in their homes. However, not all the people are bad, there are people who help these poor children, they not only offer a house but also necessary things to them, like food and clothe, and sometimes they give them education for them to become better persons in the future. Sometimes good people that help orphans have children, and those children also take advantage about orphans because they are jealous, so it is so important the communication between parents and children. In this case orphans can suffer bullying. Furthermore, those orphans are not able to endure those kind of mistreatment, so they try to escape but sadly they do not have someone who tells them which way to chose, and they find bad friends; they become part of a gang group, and the gang members cheat innocent boys. Gang members or bad people try to teach to innocent boys wrong things. Innocent people are going to learn all that others are teach them. The purpose of the writer in this book is to teach us to be good friends because a good friend is a person who is always near us when we have problems or when we do not have it. We can mention, as another important aspect, that we cannot wait that a person will ask for help. A real friend sees the difficulties in a friend and offers help. In this world there are different kinds of people. Those ones who are good and honest, and those ones who are bad and dishonest. If we are good friends, we must say the truth. It does not matter the consequences because we know that a white lie is bad as a black lie. People must be honest, for honest people always are rewarded. Not all is bad, most of the orphans think they have never had someone who wants to take care of them, but God loves them like he loves all his creation, and he always puts an angel in their lives. In addition, this book teaches us that innocence is a main topic because cruel people take advantage of poor and innocent children, and they obligate them to become criminals and to do bad things like robbing or even killing people. Another important point in this book is education. It is not only what we receive at school, and it does not matter if a person goes to school or is a professional to be educated. Nowadays, people can see that some professional people are not educated. On the contrary, we can see that there are poor people that don’t have economic resources to go to school, but they are educated. When people find someone who helps them, they must return the good actions not to pay them in bad ways. Around the world there are different kind of people. Those ones who are not intelligent, but they believed that they are, and those ones who are intelligent, but they aren’t. Mistakes make us, but also they help us in the way that we may learn from what we did wrong and not commit the same mistakes. People can say also that judging people is not good. There is a famous quote that says. ¨don‘t judge a book by its cover¨. In this book people can realize that some characters judge others just because they think in a bad way about them. The author tried to show us that the interest in money is the worst thing that a person can have. When a couple decide to have a baby, they also need to be aware about the responsibility that they are going to have to educate him. Nowadays, couples don’t plan to have babies, for that reason they don’t know the big responsibility they have. In the book we could read that a character named Fagin gave to Oliver a book about criminals that slay innocent people.  What is more, couples do not have responsibility on what their children are doing or watching. Sometimes parents give cell phones to children, and children are discovering new things, and also they imitate what they watch, read, etc. Most of the time, those things are not allow for children, but the problem is that parents don’t take care of children`s doings. Actually, the situation in the country is really difficult; people need to know how to do different things in order to survive in life. For example, we need to know how to cook, how to drive etc. To continue, there are also people that commit mistakes but at the end they regret on what they did, and it is not time to regret. It is time to improve their life and to learn about the mistake. Besides that, in this century, people do not respect each other. At school we learned that the base of society is the family. We learned that because at home we learn all the values. Nowadays´ families are not teaching values to their children. That is why the violence is increasing, and also young people just think in sex, and they are bringing babies in bad conditions of life and those poor babies also have bad behaviors. To continue with the analysis we want to mention one part of the book for you to understand better, it is when the doctor took Oliver to meet Brownlow in order to say the true about the books and the money that he took the last time. Saying the true is always the best option when someone thinks that we are guilty. Also in this beautiful book, one of the main parts is the difference between social levels. We can say that people that below a high level cannot marry to a poor person because of the stereotypes that rich people have. Many years ago, people used to get married with someone just for their own benefits. This is the case of Mr. Bumble, who marries Mrs. Corney just for being the master of the workhouse. People sometimes don´t think about the consequences or the way something is going to affect their life. They just take advantage of others, but with this book, we can learn that if we make bad actions, we will suffer the consequences of them. Otherwise, if we make good actions, we will receive our reward. Some people condemn others to live a life in which they can some take advantages. People that know they are used sometimes try to be free from that life, other just get accustomed to it. It is really important to identify what things, actions, or friends, take us to have a life that we don´t want to live. People have to be free, they have to do what they want, but they have to know what is good and what is bad. Also, sometimes when people want to change their way of life, they find people that become angels in their life, but they help them because they see potential in them. This is the case of Rose, who sees sincerity in Oliver and wants to help him. Also, we can mention that some people is blinded by rage, and that make them to act without thinking twice what they are going to do. This is a very important fact in the book that marks an important event. It is when Nancy dies by Bill Sikes hands. Sometimes people do whatever they can do to please someone, but at the end, no one thanks those persons for doing things for them. People is used to see just the bad things that others do, but they don´t see the good things. Another important point of this book is that it shows you that problem or bad situations are not last forever. At the end, people receive what they deserve for being good or bad during all their life. Sometimes, people think that their problems or bad situations will never end, but what most people don´t know is that someday everything will be fine. In the contrary, if people have been bad in their lives, they will pay for every bad actions that they have done. At the end of the book, we can see that everybody receives the consequences or the results of their actions.

CONCLUSION

In order to conclude with our analysis of Oliver Twist, we can say that society and some problems have not changed a lot since the time of the book. Why? Because the situations that happened in the book are the ones that people face nowadays. For example, poverty is an issue that Charles Dickens pointed out a lot in the book. He did it because he knew that poverty affected people in many ways. Nowadays, we can see that poverty is still an issue that makes struggles among people. Robberies still happen around the world and it has been very difficult to stop them. The problem that we consider that has been the most delicate from those times up today is social injustice because it is very clear that bad people that have money do not have problems at the moment of facing “justice” since money has a lot of influence. Also, by social injustice we refer to the way in which rich people see poor people; it is quite unfair that people who have money underestimate poor people just because they do not have the same life opportunities they have. We consider that in order to change all these problems people have to change the way they act and think. The way they act because actions lead to either good results or bad results, and the way they think because the root of anything is in people´s mind. For that reason, if people change the way they act and think, the world could be a better place and people might have better relationships among them.