Oliver Twist - plot and themes PDF

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Oliver Twist - plot Oliver Twist is a poor boy of unknown parents; he is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. He is later sold to an undertaker as an apprentice, but the cruelty and the unhappiness he experiences with his new master get him run away to London. There he falls into the hands of a nasty gang of young pickpockets, who try to make a thief out of him, but the boy is helped by an old gentleman, Mr Brownlow. Oliver is eventually kidnapped by the gang and forced to commit burglary; during the job he is shot and wounded. It is a middleclass family that takes care of Oliver and shows kindness and affection towards him, at last. Oliver spends a serene summer with them in the countryside. Investigations are made about who the boy is and it is discovered he has noble origins and that his half-brother pursues him in order to have his share of the inheritance. The gang of pickpockets and Oliver’s half-brother, who paid the thieves in order to ruin Oliver and have their father’s property all for himself, are arrested in the end. Mr Brownlow adopts Oliver and they go to live in an house in the countryside.

Oliver Twist (1838)     

This novel appeared in instalments in 1837 It fictionalizes the humiliations Dickens experienced during his childhood The protagonist, Oliver Twist, is always innocent and pure and remains incorruptible throughout the novel At the end he is saved from a life of villainy by a well-to-do family The setting is London and Dickens attacked:  the social evils of his times such as poor houses, unjust courts and the underworld  the world of the workhouses founded upon the idea that poverty was a consequence of laziness  the official of the workhouses because they abused the right of the poor as individuals and caused them further misery...