The filthy slums of Londonâ¦the dark alleys, the abandoned, unlighted buildings. The rain and fog envelop the dark city. The atmosphere is dismal; evil dominates this world. The major action of Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens moves back and forth between two worlds: the filthy slums of London, and the clean, comfortable houses of Brownlow and the Maylies. The first world is real and frightening, while the latter is idealized, almost dreamlike, in its safety and beauty. Thus, the scenes set in the slums are the most memorable, for they are where misfortune befalls Oliver. Death, used as a symbolic device, helps unify and intensify the allegorical struggle between good and evil, which is at the novel's core.
After spending nine years, since birth, in a deplorable workhouse, Oliver Twist's troubles multiply when, painfully hungry, he asks for "more." As a punishment for calling attention to his empty belly, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker, where he is treated so cruelly that he makes his way to far off London, instead of returning to his workhouse.
Fagin waits to be hanged.
Copy of the Cruikshank drawing from Charles Dicken...
English: Frontispiece first edition "Oliver Twist"...Not knowing where to go, he is "rescued" by the Artful Dodger, who tells him "I knows a respectable old gentleman as lives there wot'll give you lodging for nothink." (51). The "respectable old gentleman" is none other than Fagin, a crafty, old, shriveled scoundrel who enriches himself by teaching outcast boys how to steal. It's unsettling to witness the calculated manipulation of the trusting and impressionable Oliver into the world of petty crime. And, it isn't only Fagin who spreads evil among the cast-off waifs of London. There is someone viler, someone even Fagin fears; Bill Sikes, a brute and a murderer. He has his own criminal pursuits with the little hero in mind. Through many a "Twist," and the help from...