Oliver Twist

Chapter 8 
Rose and Harry 

         At the village was in the full glow of its richness. The trees burst out into strong green life, and flowers grew everywhere. It was the prime of the year. All things in nature were glad and flourishing. On ninght Rose became very will. Her skin had become as cold as marble. She had lost none of her beauty, but she was changed. First her face had suddenly become red. Then this disappeared, and she was once more deathly pale. By the time Oliver got back from the village,Rose had grown much worse. By midnight, she was delirious, the village doctor who examined her said the illness was very alarming. The next morning, Oliver crept away to the old churchyard. He sat down on one of the green mounds, crying silently and praying for Rose. All around him, every leaf and flower of summer was in full bloom. How could this be a time for death, Rose could surely not die when the whole earth was bursting with life. That night, Harry Maylie arrived. He was a handsome young man of about 25. His meeting with his mother was full of warm emotion on both sides.They told me you were dying, fluttering between life and death, I was so afraid you might die and never know how much I loved you. I couldn’t bear that thought. Rose was very pale, you have always been kind and noble,she said.My dearHarry, I would be like a great stone around your neck, I would hold you back from rising up in the world.So now I ask you to forget me. But Harry caught her to his chest. He gently placed one kiss on her beautiful forehead and then hurried from the room.

Oliver Twist

Chapter 7 
Oliver's Reconvery

       When Bill Sykes was carrying the wounded Oliver away from the house at Chertsey. The two men and the dogs continued to chase after the robbers. It was a very cold night, however, and the men were more than a little afraid. A short time later, they gave up and went back home.As dawn broke, the weather grew even colder. The mist rolled along the ground like a dense cloud of smoke. The grass was wet, and the wind blew with a hollow moan. Finally, as morning brought a hard rain, Oliver awoke. He was in pain. His left arm hung heavy and useless at his side. He was so weak that he could barely sit up. Finally, though, he managed to stand and make his way to the road. He spotted a house not far away. As he came closer, he saw it was the same house they had tried to rob. Oliver was in terrible pain, he had no choice but to knock on the door. While he was looking at Oliver, two women waited. One of them was Mrs. Maylie, a small old woman who was dressed neatly in old-fashioned clothing. The other was Rose, a lovely girl about 17 years old. She was so sweet and lovely, the earth seemed too harsh and rough for her, a thousand lights played about her face. Soon Dr. Losberne came down the stairs to make his report. The two women looked into the room where Oliver was resting. Instead of seeing the rough-faced thief they had expected, they saw a mere child worn with pain and exhaustion. His wounded arm was crossed upon his chest. His head rested on the other arm. The boy stirred and smiled in his sleep. Rose and Mrs. Maylie agreed to the doctor plan. Dr. Losberne went downstairs and had a long talk with Giles. Eventually Giles became very confused. He was no longer sure that it was Oliver who had come to rob the house. By the time two policemen came, Giles was not even sure that he had shot anyone. The police went away thinking Oliver had been shot in an accident. After the police left, Oliver tried to tell the doctor and the two women his story. He had to stop often because of pain and lack of strength.Oliver pillow was smoothed by gentle hands that night. His sleep was peaceful and happy, but Oliver problems were neither slight nor few.One day, at his request, Oliver was taken by Dr.Losberne to Mr. Brownlow’s house.After making inquiries, Dr. Losberne  learned that Mr.Brownlow had gone on a trip to the west Indies, he had left six weeks before.Oliver was terribly disappointed. How he had longed to see the old gentleman again. About two weeks later, when Oliver was well enough, the women took him to a country cottage.It was a lovely spot. The little boy, whose days had been spent in crowded, dirty streets, seemed to come alive in this magical place. It was a happy time. The boys days were peaceful and calm.At night, Oliver would read a chapter or two of the Bible aloud to Rose and Mrs.Maylie.In this way, three lovely, happy months went by.Oliver grew very close to the kind women who had saved him, and they to him.

Oliver Twist

Chapter 6 
Old Sally's Story 

         The matron at the workhouse where Oliver had been sent was just having tea. She had been alone these past 25 years old since Mr.Corney had died. She heard a knock on the door. It was Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle. Shyly, Mrs.Corney asked Mr. Bumble if he would like to stay for tea.They sat down at a round table by the fire. He drank the last of his tea and finished a piece of toast. Then he wiped his lips and kissed her. Just then there was a knock at the door, it was a poor woman from the workhouse. Mrs.Corney was very angry. She got up and muttered something about old women who couldn’t even die without bothering their betters, as Mrs.Corney followed the wretched woman outside, she scolded her all the way.The poor girl trusted me, and I stole from her and from her baby. In my heart I stole her treasure when she first showed it to me. It was hanging round her neck. They would have treated her baby better, if they had known. Oh, if someone would only help that poor child.Then suddenly she drew back. Old Sally had made a strange choking sound and then fallen back on the bed, lifeless. However, Fagin was growing very worried. When Toby had returned alone from the robbery, he had no idea of what had happened to oliver or sikes. Finally, he had turned his steps toward home. He was about to open his door when a dark figure approached him. Fagin looked at him with scorn.They both walked all around the place but found no one.Finally, Monks left. Did you know the master of the workhouse is worse tonight, my love? asked Mr. Bumble. Poor Mr. Slout can’t live a week, the doctor says. And I shall take his place... Oh, Mrs. Corney, what luck for two hearts such as ours, One little word from you,Mrs. Corney, and everything would be perfect. Will you say that one little, little word. After a long and loving hug with his future wife, Mr. Bumble went out into the cold again. This time he went to Mr. Sowerberry’s to order a coffin for old Sally. 

Oliver Twist

Chapter 5 
A Tribble Job 

          Once day, windy night when fagin went out to visit bill sikes. He and sikes were busily planning to rob a house in Chertsey. Sikes was going to do the job with another obber, Toby Crackit. Toby had been hanging about he fine house for two weeks. But he had not been ble to get any of the servants to join in their plot.The robbers would need a small child to go in the window and open the front door for them. It was decided that Oliver would go with Nancy more willingly than with anyone else. So she was chosen to take Oliver to sikes. The next night Nancy walked out Fagin’s door holding Oliver hand tightly. Oliver thought about calling for help or many people were still in the streets. But it was as if Nancy could read his thoughts. When they reached Bill Sikes the man loaded his gun in front of Oliver. Then he touched the cold metal to the boy’s head. Before Oliver had time to look around, Sikes caught him under the arms. Three or four seconds later, Oliver and Toby were lying in the grass on the other side of the wall. Sikes followed directly. Then they crept slowly toward the house.Now, for the first time, Oliver could see what the men had on their minds. When I put you through this window, go up the steps and along the hall to the street door. Then open the door and let us in.Sikes pushed Oliver through the window. Oliver heard men shouting and guns shooting. For a minute, he felt himself being carried over uneven ground at a rapid pace. Then a deadly cold feeling gripped the boy’s heart, and he saw and heard no more. 

Oliver Twist

Chapter 4
The Boy is Kidnapped

         Dickens achieves his biting criticism of social conditions through deep satire and hyperbolic statements. Throughout the novel, absurd characters and situations are presented as normal, and Dickens often says the opposite of what he really means.  Since paupers like Oliver stand no chance of defeating their tormenters, Dickens takes it upon himself to defeat them with sly humor that reveals their faults more sharply than a serious tone might have. Though Oliver himself will never have much of a sense of humor, we will eventually meet other boys in his situation who will join Dickens in using humor as a weapon in their woefully unequal struggle with the society that oppresses them. The workhouse board considers sending Oliver out to sea as a cabin boy, expecting that he would die quickly in such miserable conditions. However, Mr. Sowerberry, the parish undertaker, takes Oliver on as his apprentice. Mr. Bumble informs Oliver that he will suffer dire consequences if he ever complains about his situation. Mrs. Sowerberry remarks that Oliver is rather small. Mr. Bumble assures her that he will grow, but she grumbles that he will only grow by eating their food. Mrs. Sowerberry serves Oliver the leftovers that the dog has declined to eat. Oliver devours the food as though it were a great feast. After he finishes, Mrs. Sowerberry leads him to his bed, worrying that his appetite seems so large.

Oliver Twist

Chapter 3
Oliver Meets Mr.Brownlow

        One day in the Parish, Oliver has been flogged and then locked in a dark room as a public example. Mr. Gamfield, a brutish chimney sweep, offers to take Oliver on as an apprentice. Because several boys have died under his supervision, the board considers five pounds too large a reward, and they settle on just over three pounds. Mr. Bumble, Mr. Gamfield, and Oliver appear before a magistrate to seal the bargain. At the last minute, the magistrate notices Oliver’s pale, alarmed face. He asks the boy why he looks so terrified. Oliver falls on his knees and begs that he be locked in a room, beaten, killed, or any other punishment besides being apprenticed to Mr. Gamfield. The magistrate refuses to approve the apprenticeship, and the workhouse authorities again advertise Oliver’s availability. The assumption on the part of the middle-class characters that the lower classes are naturally base, criminal, and filthy serves to support their vision of themselves as a clean and morally upright social group. The gentlemen on the workhouse board call Oliver a savage who is destined for the gallows. After Oliver’s outrageous request for more food, the board schemes to apprentice him to a brutal master, hoping that he will soon die. Even when the upper classes claim to be alleviating the lower-class predicament, they only end up aggravating it. In order to save Oliver from what they believe to be his certain fate as a criminal, the board essentially ensures his early death by apprenticing him to a brutal employes.

Oliver Twist

Chapter 2
Off to London

      Authorities at the workhouse send Oliver to a branch-workhouse for juvenile offenders against the poor laws. The overseer, Mrs. Mann, receives an adequate sum for each childs upkeep, but she keeps most of the money and lets the children go hungry, sometimes even letting them die.On Oliver’s ninth birthday, Mr. Bumble, a minor church official known as the parish beadle, informs Mrs. Mann that Oliver is too old to stay at her establishment. Since no one has been able to discover his mother’s or father’s identity, he must return to the workhouse. Mrs. Mann asks how the boy came to have any name at all. Mr. Bumble tells her that he keeps a list of names in alphabetical order, naming the orphans from the list as they are born. Mrs. Mann fetches Oliver. When Mr. Bumble is not looking, she glowers and shakes her fist at the boy, so he stays silent about the miserable conditions at her establishment. Before Oliver departs, Mrs. Mann gives him some bread and butter so that he will not seem too hungry at the workhouse.The workhouse offers the poor the opportunity to starve slowly as opposed to quick starvation on the streets. For the workhouse, the undertaker’s bill is a major budget item due to the large number of deaths. Oliver and his young companions suffer the tortures of slow starvation. One night at dinner, one child tells the others that if he does not have another bowl of gruel he might eat one of them. Terrified, the children at the workhouse cast lots, determining that whoever loses shall be required to ask for more food for the boy. Oliver loses, and after dinner, the other children insist that Oliver ask for more food at supper. His request so shocks the authorities that they offer five pounds as a reward to anyone who will take Oliver off of their hands.

Oliver Twist

Chapter 1
A Hungry Orphan

   Oliver Twist is born a sickly infant in a workhouse. The parish surgeon and a drunken nurse attend his birth. His mother kisses his forehead and dies, and the nurse announces that Oliver’s mother was found lying in the streets the night before. The workhouses that figure prominently in the first few chapters of the novel were institutions that the Victorian middle class established to raise poor children. Since it was believed that certain vices were inherent to the poor and that poor families fostered rather than discouraged such vices, poor husbands and wives were separated in order to prevent them from having children and expanding the lower class. Poor children were taken away from their parents in order to allow the state and the church to raise them in the manner they believed most appropriate.In the narrative, the workhouse functions as a sign of the moral hypocrisy of the working class. Mrs. Mann steals from the children in her care, feeding and clothing them inadequately. The Victorian middle class saw cleanliness as a moral virtue, and the workhouse was supposed to rescue the poor from the immoral condition of filth. However, the workhouse in Dickens’s novel is a filthy place Mrs. Mann never ensures that the children practice good hygiene except during an inspection. Workhouses were established to save the poor from starvation, disease, and filth, but in fact they end up visiting precisely those hardships on the poor. Furthermore, Mr. Bumble’s actions underscore middle-class hypocrisy, especially when he criticizes Oliver for not gratefully accepting his dire conditions. Bumble himself, however, is fat and well dressed, and the entire workhouse board is full of fat gentlemen who preach the value of a meager diet for workhouse residents.