Oliver Twist

by Charles Dickens

Book Overview

The gaunt, pathetic figure of orphan Oliver being refused more gruel has become a literary and cultural icon, embedded in the national consciousness as a searing image of poverty and helplessness, dramatizing as it does the extent to which what is taken for granted at home is denied in the workhouse. Yet the novel, a powerful indictment of the workhouse, is also more than that, for even as Oliver escapes its callous grasp, he is snared by the criminal...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0895772582
• ISBN13: 9780895772589
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Reader's Digest Children's Books
• Length: 398 Pages
• Weight: 2.02 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good book

Oliver Twist is an interesting story of young orphan who lives with a lot of mystery around him and has an unfortune life.Although the book is a bit complex, it can explain and describe what the author would like to say through his characters. Oliver's character feels very real and make me sympatize with his life.While reading through this story, the author try to make us believe that help can come to anyone in an unexpected form. As a reader I think anyone who read this book will love it with interesting characters and many ups and downs story.

Charles Dickens' Best Novel

This is my favorite novel by Charles Dickens. The book hooks you in and is a fascinating page turner from beginning to end. It has loads of adventure, mystery, and drama. It also has a lot of melodrama which reminds me of the old silent movies. Dickens writes about the villainous characters with a great deal of sarcasm, often calling them "philosophers." He describes the good characters in angelic terms. I was surprised to read a very virulent description of the Jew Fagin. It reminded me of Nazi propaganda. I got the impression that Fagin's business associates, the merchants who sold the stolen merchandise, were also Jews. This book thoroughly goes over the phenomena of how badly lower class people are treated in their lives. They are constantly abused, verbally and physically, by authority figures. I really wonder what it is about poverty that makes people treat each other so abusively and inhumanely. Some people say Dickens' books are flawed. That doesn't matter whatsoever. The important thing is that Dickens was the greatest storyteller of the 19th century.

Forsaken child

The creative novel Oliver Twist, written by Charles Dickens in 1838, defines a classic of all times. This intense story reflects a young boy's life in London with no family or place to go. Oliver's mother dies while giving birth to her son in the beginning of the book. Oliver's father remains unknown. Throughout the book the reader sees constant struggles. Oliver is befriended by Fagin and his company. Fagin, along with the Artful Dodger, invite Oliver to stay with them and become a thief. During one of Oliver's pick pocketing adventures; he is caught by Mr. Brownlow. Instead of reprimanding the young lad, Mr. Brownlow decides to raise him. Oliver desperately searches for the answer to his past while trying to stay alive on the streets of London. Ironically, Mr. Brownlow is Oliver's grandfather. A dominate theme of Oliver Twist examines the importance of family. Oliver's early years taught him to fend for himself and he suffers from never experiencing a loving and nurturing childhood. The setting of the book plays a powerful role as the story unfolds. Dickens describes the setting of London and all the places that Oliver stays very descriptively. "The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odor. The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and dirt..." (page. 56). Dickens explains the facilities that were available to poor Oliver and makes them sound unbearable. He does an excellent job making the setting come alive and allows the reader to plight. I would recommend all readers at some point in life to delve into this classic. I found Oliver Twist very moving and towards the end hoping only the best for poor Oliver.

the best book

i loved this book so much! i recamend it for everyone!

A masterpiece (despite the anti-Semitism)

Dickens is probably less fashionable today than ever (although the BBC adaptation of Our Mutual Friend might rekindle a similar interest in his work as there now is for Jane Austen's). Perhaps the reason for this fall from favor is the quintessential Victorian nature of Dickens's writing - he was as much the prose apotheosis of his time as Mozart was for classical music or Shakespeare for Renaissance drama. Whatever the capriciousness of current fashion, Dickens is well worth reading. He was prodigiously skilled in his ability to describe people, places and events and his novels are driven by elaborately riveting plots and dramatic denouements. If none of these things appeal to you, there's Dickens's supreme comic flair - he's often funny and I mean hysterically, laugh-out-loud funny. Oliver Twist is one of Dickens's early works and suffers from a few failings such as a tendency to stray into realms of gross sentimentality, not to mention consistent anti-Semitism (although Dickens later tried to redeem his vile portrayal of Fagin with the sympathetic Riah in Our Mutual Friend). But Dickens uncovered his fierce passion for defending the underdog in Oliver Twist and this theme was repeated in some way in all his subsequent work. His depiction of the cruelty of England's poor laws and the petty tyranny of the minor bureaucrats who sprung up as a result of those laws was so vivid that it stirred people to demand change. With the stock of fantastic characters in Oliver Twist it is a strange failing of Dickens that the eponymous hero is not much more than a cipher. It is as if Oliver doesn't really exist, he's just a foil who brings out the worst or the best in those who come into contact with him. The strength of most of the other characterizations, however, makes up for this anomaly. Bill Sikes is such a deplorable villain that his villainy becomes etched in your mind - you almost become afraid that you might bump into him and his evil dog. Fagin, the Jewish pied piper, has a strange charm, although I'm sure Dickens didn't mean him to be taken as anything other than another arch villain (of the manipulative kind - a foil to Sikes's horribly violent nature). There are plenty of other vivid characters, but the great strengths of Oliver Twist are the passages describing London, and especially the miserably poor part of London, in the 1830s. Follow Sikes and Oliver on their trek across this metropolis and you'll get as clear and vivid a picture of Industrial Revolution London as ever was put into prose. No-one could write about dirt, squalor, or injustice quite like Dickens, and when you combine this facility with a real comic genius you have a winning formula.