Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education "Russian University of Economics. G.V. Plekhanov»
Department of Philosophy
Philosophical analysis of the novel
Charles Dickens
"The Adventures of Oliver Twist"
Performed:
3rd year student
groups 2306
full-time education
Faculty of Finance
Tutaeva Zalina Musaevna
Scientific adviser:
Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy
Ponizovkina Irina Fedorovna
Moscow, 2011
Philosophical analysis of the novel by Charles Dickens "The Adventures of Oliver Twist"
The Adventures of Oliver Twist is the most famous novel by Charles Dickens, the first in English literature, the main character of which was a child. The novel was written in England, in 1937-1939. It began to be printed in Russia in 1841, when an excerpt from the novel (Chapter XXIII) appeared in the February issue of Literaturnaya Gazeta (No. 14). The chapter was titled "On the Influence of Teaspoons on Love and Morality" ».
In the novel The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens builds a plot in the center of which is the boy's encounter with an ungrateful reality.
The protagonist of the novel a little boy named Oliver Twist, whose mother died in childbirth in the workhouse.
He grows up in an orphanage at the local parish, the funds of which are extremely meager.
Starving peers force him to ask for supplements for dinner. For this obstinacy, the authorities sell him to the undertaker's office, where Oliver is bullied by the senior apprentice.
After a fight with an apprentice, Oliver flees to London, where he falls into the gang of a young pickpocket, nicknamed the Artful Dodger. The cunning and treacherous Jew Fagin is in charge of the den of criminals. The cold-blooded killer and robber Bill Sykes also visits there. His 17-year-old girlfriend Nancy sees a kindred spirit in Oliver and shows kindness to him.
The plans of the criminals include teaching Oliver the trade of a pickpocket, but after a failed robbery, the boy ends up in the house of a virtuous gentleman, Mr. Brownlow, who eventually begins to suspect that Oliver is the son of his friend. Sykes and Nancy bring Oliver back to the underworld to take part in a heist.
As it turns out, Monks, Oliver's half-brother, is behind Fagin and is trying to disinherit him. After another failure of the criminals, Oliver first ends up in the house of Miss Meili, who at the end of the book turns out to be the hero's aunt. Nancy comes to them with the news that Monks and Fagin are not parting with the hope of stealing or killing Oliver. And with this news, Roz Meily goes to Mr. Brownlow's house to resolve this situation with his help. Oliver then returns to Mr. Brownlow.
Sikes becomes aware of Nancy's visits to Mr. Brownlow. In a fit of anger, the villain kills the unfortunate girl, but soon he himself dies. Monks has to open his dirty secrets, come to terms with the loss of the inheritance and go to America, where he will die in prison. Fagin goes to the gallows. Oliver lives happily in the home of his savior Mr. Brownlow.
This is the plot of this novel.
In this novel, Dickens' deeply critical attitude to bourgeois reality was fully reflected. Oliver Twist was written under the influence of the famous Poor Law of 1834, which doomed the unemployed and homeless poor to complete savagery and extinction in the so-called workhouses. Dickens artistically embodies his indignation at this law and the position created for the people in the story of a boy born in a house of charity.
Oliver's life path is a series of terrible pictures of hunger, want and beatings. Depicting the ordeals that fall on the young hero of the novel, Dickens unfolds a broad picture of the English life of his time.
Ch. Dickens, as a writer-educator, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses to help and support those who were born poor and therefore doomed from the cradle to deprivation and humiliation. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman.
Workhouses that were supposed to provide ordinary people work, food, shelter, in fact, were like prisons: the poor were imprisoned there by force, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, dooming them to a slow death of starvation. Not for nothing, after all, the workers themselves called the workhouses "Bastilles for the poor."
And the boys and girls who were not needed by anyone, by chance finding themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they fell into the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, the girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows. From the above, we can conclude that the plot of this work is permeated with the problem of that time, as well as modernity, a problem that concerns the moral education of a person. The writer believes that the problem of educating a person is the business of the whole society. One of the tasks of the novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is to show the harsh truth in order to force society to be fairer and more merciful.
The idea of this novel, I think, can be attributed to one of the ethical problems studied in philosophy, to the problem of morality, morality.
The importance of moral education was emphasized by prominent thinkers of different eras, from antiquity to our time. Speaking of philosophers who studied ethical issues, it is worth highlighting Pythagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, Bruno - the harbinger of classical bourgeois philosophy and ethics, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Aristotle, etc. Each of them had their own special point of view on this problem, their own views.
In order to understand what is the essence of the problem that permeates the work, I would like to turn to the period in which this work was written.
So, let's get into the history of England. 1832, the adoption of parliamentary reform, which entailed, I would say, more negative consequences for the lower stratum of society in England at that time.
The reform of 1832 meant a political compromise between the landed aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie. As a result of this compromise, as Marx wrote, the bourgeoisie was "recognized as the ruling class politically as well" (K. Marx, The British Constitution, K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., vol. 11, ed. 2, p. 100.) However, its dominance was not complete even after this reform: the landed aristocracy retained significant influence on the general administration of the country and the legislative bodies.
Soon after the reform, the bourgeoisie, having gained access to power, passed a law in parliament that worsened the already difficult situation of the working class: in 1832, the tax in favor of the poor was abolished and workhouses were established.
For 300 years there was a law in England according to which the poor were given "aid" by the parishes in which they lived. Funds for this were obtained by taxing the agricultural population. The bourgeoisie was especially dissatisfied with this tax, although it did not fall on them. The issuance of cash benefits to the poor prevented the greedy bourgeois from getting cheap labor force because the poor refused to work for low wages, in any case lower than the cash allowance they received from the parish. Therefore, the bourgeoisie has now replaced the issuance of monetary benefits by keeping the poor in workhouses with a hard labor and humiliating regime.
In Engels' book The Condition of the Working Class in England, we can read about these workhouses: "These workhouses, or, as the people call them, Bastilles of the Poor Law, are such that they must scare away anyone who has the slightest hope of breaking through." without this beneficence of society. In order for the poor man to ask for help only in the most extreme cases, so that he, before deciding on this, exhausted all the possibilities of doing without it, such a scarecrow was made from the workhouse, which only the refined imagination of the Malthusian can think of (Malthus (1776 - 1834) - an English bourgeois economist, covering the real causes of poverty and misery, which are the basis of the capitalist system, tried to prove that the source of poverty is the faster growth of the population in comparison with the growth of the means for its subsistence. Based on this thoroughly false explanation, Malthus advised workers to refrain from early marriage and childbearing, abstinence from food, etc.)
The food in them is worse than the food of the poorest workers, and the work is harder: otherwise the latter would prefer to stay in the workhouse to their miserable existence outside it ... Even in prisons, the food is on average better, so that the inhabitants of the workhouse often commit some kind of some misdemeanor in order to go to prison ... In the workhouse in Greenwich in the summer of 1843, a five-year-old boy, as punishment for some misconduct, was locked up for three nights in a dead room, where he had to sleep on the lids of coffins. In the workhouse at Hearn the same thing was done to a little girl... The details of the treatment of the poor in this establishment are outrageous... George Robson had a wound on his shoulder which was completely neglected. They put him at the pump and made him move it with his good hand, fed him the usual food of the workhouse, but, exhausted by the neglected wound, he could not digest it. As a result, he grew weaker and weaker; but the more he complained, the worse he was treated ... He fell ill, but even then his treatment did not get better. Finally he was released at his request with his wife and left the workhouse, admonished with the most offensive expressions. Two days later he died in Leicester, and the doctor, who witnessed him after death, certified that the death occurred from a neglected wound and from food, which, in view of his condition, was completely indigestible for him ”(Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England). The facts presented here were not isolated, they characterize the regime of all workhouses.
“Is it possible to be surprised at the fact,” continues Engels, “that the poor refuse under such conditions to resort to public assistance, that they prefer starvation to these Bastilles?...”
Thus, it can be concluded that new law o the poor deprived the unemployed and the poor of the right to public assistance; from now on, the receipt of such assistance was conditioned by being in a “workhouse”, where the inhabitants were exhausted by overwork and unproductive work, prison discipline, and starved. Everything was done in order to force the unemployed to hire for a pittance.
The legislation of the early 1930s exposed the class essence of English bourgeois liberalism. The working class, which took an active part in the struggle for parliamentary reform, became convinced that the bourgeoisie had deceived it and appropriated all the fruits of the victory won over the landed aristocracy.
From the above, we can say that the French Revolution was really great in terms of the depth of socio-economic and political change, which she caused in her homeland and throughout Europe. But its moral results were truly insignificant.
The bourgeois political republics, if they have improved morals in one respect, have worsened them in many other respects. The commodity economy, freed from the restraining shackles of feudal power and traditional - family, religious, national and other "prejudices", stimulated the unlimited revelry of private interests, imposed the seal of moral decay on all areas of life, but these countless private vices were in no way summarized into one common virtue. . The bourgeoisie, according to a vivid description of K. Marx and F. Engels, “left no other connection between people, except for naked interest, a heartless “chistogan”. ice water egotistical calculation, she drowned the sacred awe of religious ecstasy, chivalrous enthusiasm, petty-bourgeois sentimentality. It has transformed a person's personal dignity into an exchange value..."
In a word, the real course of the historical process has revealed that capitalism, suitable for many great and small things, is absolutely incapable of providing such a synthesis of the individual and the race, happiness and duty, private interests and social obligations, which the philosophers justified theoretically, albeit in different ways. New time. This, in my opinion, is the main philosophical idea of the work.
Description
"The Adventures of Oliver Twist" - the most famous novel Charles Dickens, the first in English literature, whose main character was a child. The novel was written in England, in 1937-1939. It began to be printed in Russia in 1841, when an excerpt from the novel (Chapter XXIII) appeared in the February issue of Literaturnaya Gazeta (No. 14). The chapter was titled "On the Influence of Teaspoons on Love and Morality."
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education "Russian University of Economics. G.V. Plekhanov»
Department of Philosophy
Philosophical analysis of the novel
Charles Dickens
"The Adventures of Oliver Twist"
Performed:
3rd year student
groups 2306
full-time education
Faculty of Finance
Tutaeva Zalina Musaevna
Scientific adviser:
Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy
Ponizovkina Irina Fedorovna
Moscow, 2011
Philosophical analysis of the novel by Charles Dickens "The Adventures of Oliver Twist"
The Adventures of Oliver Twist is the most famous novel by Charles Dickens, the first in English literature, the main character of which was a child. The novel was written in England, in 1937-1939. It began to be printed in Russia in 1841, when an excerpt from the novel (Chapter XXIII) appeared in the February issue of Literaturnaya Gazeta (No. 14). The chapter was titled "On the Influence of Teaspoons on Love and Morality" ».
In the novel The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens builds a plot in the center of which is the boy's encounter with an ungrateful reality.
The protagonist of the novel is a little boy named Oliver Twist, whose mother died in childbirth in a workhouse.
He grows up in an orphanage at the local parish, the funds of which are extremely meager.
Starving peers force him to ask for supplements for dinner. For this obstinacy, the authorities sell him to the undertaker's office, where Oliver is bullied by the senior apprentice.
After a fight with an apprentice, Oliver flees to London, where he falls into the gang of a young pickpocket, nicknamed the Artful Dodger. The cunning and treacherous Jew Fagin is in charge of the den of criminals. The cold-blooded killer and robber Bill Sykes also visits there. His 17-year-old girlfriend Nancy sees a kindred spirit in Oliver and shows kindness to him.
The plans of the criminals include teaching Oliver the trade of a pickpocket, but after a failed robbery, the boy ends up in the house of a virtuous gentleman, Mr. Brownlow, who eventually begins to suspect that Oliver is the son of his friend. Sykes and Nancy bring Oliver back to the underworld to take part in a heist.
As it turns out, Monks, Oliver's half-brother, is behind Fagin and is trying to disinherit him. After another failure of the criminals, Oliver first ends up in the house of Miss Meili, who at the end of the book turns out to be the hero's aunt. Nancy comes to them with the news that Monks and Fagin are not parting with the hope of stealing or killing Oliver. And with this news, Roz Meily goes to Mr. Brownlow's house to resolve this situation with his help. Oliver then returns to Mr. Brownlow.
Sikes becomes aware of Nancy's visits to Mr. Brownlow. In a fit of anger, the villain kills the unfortunate girl, but soon he himself dies. Monks has to reveal his dirty secrets, come to terms with the loss of his inheritance and leave for America, where he will die in prison. Fagin goes to the gallows. Oliver lives happily in the home of his savior Mr. Brownlow.
This is the plot of this novel.
In this novel, Dickens' deeply critical attitude to bourgeois reality was fully reflected. Oliver Twist was written under the influence of the famous Poor Law of 1834, which doomed the unemployed and homeless poor to complete savagery and extinction in the so-called workhouses. Dickens artistically embodies his indignation at this law and the position created for the people in the story of a boy born in a house of charity.
Oliver's life path is a series of terrible pictures of hunger, want and beatings. Depicting the ordeals that fall on the young hero of the novel, Dickens unfolds a broad picture of the English life of his time.
Ch. Dickens, as a writer-educator, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses to help and support those who were born poor and therefore doomed from the cradle to deprivation and humiliation. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman.
The workhouses, which were supposed to provide ordinary people with work, food, shelter, actually looked like prisons: the poor were imprisoned there by force, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, dooming them to slow starvation. Not for nothing, after all, the workers themselves called the workhouses "Bastilles for the poor."
And the boys and girls who were not needed by anyone, by chance finding themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they fell into the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, the girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows. From the above, we can conclude that the plot of this work is permeated with the problem of that time, as well as modernity, a problem that concerns the moral education of a person. The writer believes that the problem of educating a person is the business of the whole society. One of the tasks of the novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is to show the harsh truth in order to force society to be fairer and more merciful.
The idea of this novel, I think, can be attributed to one of the ethical problems studied in philosophy, to the problem of morality, morality.
The importance of moral education was emphasized by prominent thinkers of different eras, from antiquity to our time. Speaking of philosophers who studied ethical issues, it is worth highlighting Pythagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, Bruno - the harbinger of classical bourgeois philosophy and ethics, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Aristotle, etc. Each of them had their own special point of view on this problem, their own views.
In order to understand what is the essence of the problem that permeates the work, I would like to turn to the period in which this work was written.
So, let's get into the history of England. 1832, the adoption of parliamentary reform, which entailed, I would say, more negative consequences for the lower stratum of society in England at that time.
The reform of 1832 meant a political compromise between the landed aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie. As a result of this compromise, as Marx wrote, the bourgeoisie was "recognized as the ruling class politically as well" (K. Marx, The British Constitution, K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., vol. 11, ed. 2, p. 100.) However, its dominance was not complete even after this reform: the landed aristocracy retained significant influence on the general administration of the country and the legislative bodies.
Soon after the reform, the bourgeoisie, having gained access to power, passed a law in parliament that worsened the already difficult situation of the working class: in 1832, the tax in favor of the poor was abolished and workhouses were established.
For 300 years there was a law in England according to which the poor were given "aid" by the parishes in which they lived. Funds for this were obtained by taxing the agricultural population. The bourgeoisie was especially dissatisfied with this tax, although it did not fall on them. The issuance of a cash allowance to the poor prevented the greedy bourgeois from getting cheap labor, since the poor refused to work for low wages, in any case lower than the cash allowance they received from the parish. Therefore, the bourgeoisie has now replaced the issuance of monetary benefits by keeping the poor in workhouses with a hard labor and humiliating regime.
In Engels' book The Condition of the Working Class in England, we can read about these workhouses: "These workhouses, or, as the people call them, Bastilles of the Poor Law, are such that they must scare away anyone who has the slightest hope of breaking through." without this beneficence of society. In order for the poor man to ask for help only in the most extreme cases, so that he, before deciding on this, exhausted all the possibilities of doing without it, such a scarecrow was made from the workhouse, which only the refined imagination of the Malthusian can think of (Malthus (1776 - 1834) - an English bourgeois economist, covering the real causes of poverty and misery, which are the basis of the capitalist system, tried to prove that the source of poverty is the faster growth of the population in comparison with the growth of the means for its subsistence. Based on this thoroughly false explanation, Malthus advised workers to refrain from early marriage and childbearing, abstinence from food, etc.)
The food in them is worse than the food of the poorest workers, and the work is harder: otherwise the latter would prefer to stay in the workhouse to their miserable existence outside it ... Even in prisons, the food is on average better, so that the inhabitants of the workhouse often commit some kind of some misdemeanor in order to go to prison ... In the workhouse in Greenwich in the summer of 1843, a five-year-old boy, as punishment for some misconduct, was locked up for three nights in a dead room, where he had to sleep on the lids of coffins. In the workhouse at Hearn the same thing was done to a little girl... The details of the treatment of the poor in this establishment are outrageous... George Robson had a wound on his shoulder which was completely neglected. They put him at the pump and made him move it with his good hand, fed him the usual food of the workhouse, but, exhausted by the neglected wound, he could not digest it. As a result, he grew weaker and weaker; but the more he complained, the worse he was treated ... He fell ill, but even then his treatment did not get better. Finally he was released at his request with his wife and left the workhouse, admonished with the most offensive expressions. Two days later he died in Leicester, and the doctor, who witnessed him after death, certified that the death occurred from a neglected wound and from food, which, in view of his condition, was completely indigestible for him ”(Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England). The facts presented here were not isolated, they characterize the regime of all workhouses.
“Is it possible to be surprised at the fact,” continues Engels, “that the poor refuse under such conditions to resort to public assistance, that they prefer starvation to these Bastilles?...”
Thus, it can be concluded that the new Poor Law deprived the unemployed and the poor of the right to public assistance; from now on, the receipt of such assistance was conditioned by being in a “workhouse”, where the inhabitants were exhausted by overwork and unproductive work, prison discipline, and starved. Everything was done in order to force the unemployed to hire for a pittance.
The legislation of the early 1930s exposed the class essence of English bourgeois liberalism. The working class, which took an active part in the struggle for parliamentary reform, became convinced that the bourgeoisie had deceived it and appropriated all the fruits of the victory won over the landed aristocracy.
From the above, we can say that the Great French Revolution was really great in terms of the depth of the socio-economic and political changes that it caused in its homeland and throughout Europe. But its moral results were truly insignificant.
The bourgeois political republics, if they have improved morals in one respect, have worsened them in many other respects. The commodity economy, freed from the restraining shackles of feudal power and traditional - family, religious, national and other "prejudices", stimulated the unlimited revelry of private interests, imposed the seal of moral decay on all areas of life, but these countless private vices were in no way summarized into one common virtue. . The bourgeoisie, according to a vivid description of K. Marx and F. Engels, “left no other connection between people, except for naked interest, a heartless “chistogan”. transformed a person's personal dignity into an exchange value..."
In a word, the real course of the historical process has revealed that capitalism, suitable for many great and small things, is absolutely incapable of providing such a synthesis of the individual and the race, happiness and duty, private interests and social obligations, which the philosophers justified theoretically, albeit in different ways. New time. This, in my opinion, is the main philosophical idea of the work.
Also, from the above, one can see that the ideas of the novel were close to many philosophers, and in more detail the development of ethical and philosophical thought related to that period of time can be traced in the ideas of I. Kant, I.G. Fichte, F.V.I. Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel, Feuerbach, Engels, etc.
Kant in his ethical writings constantly refers to the relationship between morality and law. It is precisely in the analysis of this problem that the critical attitude of the philosopher towards bourgeois society is especially sharply revealed. Kant reveals the very specificity of morality to a large extent by distinguishing it from law. He distinguishes between external, positive, and internal, subjective, driving foundations of social behavior.
etc.................
In the novel The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens builds a plot in the center of which is the boy's encounter with an ungrateful reality. Main character novel - a little boy named Oliver Twist. Born in a workhouse, from the first minutes of his life he remained an orphan, and this meant in his position not only a future full of hardships and hardships, but also loneliness, defenselessness against the insults and injustice that he would have to endure. The baby was frail, the doctor said that he would not survive.
Dickens, as an enlightening writer, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses to help and support those who were born poor and therefore doomed to deprivation and humiliation from the cradle. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman.
The workhouses, which were supposed to provide ordinary people with work, food, shelter, actually looked like prisons: the poor were imprisoned there by force, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, dooming them to slow starvation. It is not for nothing that the workers themselves called the workhouses “Bastilles for the Poor”.
From the workhouse, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker; there he runs into Noah's orphanage boy Claypole, who, being older and stronger, constantly humiliates Oliver. Soon Oliver escapes to London.
Boys and girls who were of no use to anyone, by chance finding themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they fell into the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, the girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows.
This novel is criminal. Society of London criminals Dickens portrays simply. This is a legitimate part of the existence of capitals. A boy from the street, known as the Sly Trickster, promises Oliver lodging and patronage in London, and takes him to a buyer of stolen goods, godfather London thieves and swindlers to the Jew Fagin. They want to put Oliver on a criminal path.
It is important for Dickens to give the reader the idea that the soul of a child is not prone to crime. Children are the personification of spiritual purity and unlawful suffering. A large part of the novel is devoted to this. Dickens, like many writers of that time, was concerned about the question: what is the main thing in shaping the character of a person, his personality - public environment, origin (parents and ancestors) or his inclinations and abilities? What makes a person what he is: decent and noble, or vile, dishonorable and criminal? And does criminal always mean vile, cruel, soulless? Answering this question, Dickens creates in the novel the image of Nancy - a girl who has fallen into early age into the criminal world, but retaining a kind, sympathetic heart, the ability to sympathize, because it is not in vain that she is trying to protect little Oliver from a vicious path.
Thus, we see that social romance Ch. Dickens' "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is a lively response to the most topical and burning problems of our time. And in terms of popularity and appreciation of readers, this novel can rightfully be considered a folk novel.
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The plot of the novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is built in such a way that the reader is in the center of attention of a boy who is faced with an ungrateful reality. He is an orphan from the first minutes of his life. Oliver was not only deprived of all the benefits of a normal existence, but also grew up very lonely, defenseless against an unfair fate.
Since Dickens belongs to the writers of the Enlightenment, he never focused on the inhuman conditions in which the poor lived at that time. The writer believed that poverty itself was not so terrible as the indifferent attitude of other people to such a category of people. It was because of this misperception by society that the poor suffered, as they were doomed to eternal humiliation, deprivation and wandering. After all, workhouses, the creation of which was conceived to provide ordinary people with shelter, food, work, rather resembled prisons. The poor were separated from their families and imprisoned there by force, fed very poorly, forced to do backbreaking and useless work. As a result, they just slowly starved to death.
After the workhouse, Oliver becomes an undertaker's apprentice and victim of orphanage boy Noah Claypole's bullying. The latter, using his advantage in age and strength, constantly humiliates the protagonist. Oliver flees and ends up in London. As you know, such children of the street, whose fate did not bother anyone, for the most part became the dregs of society - vagabonds and criminals. They were forced to engage in crime in order to somehow live. And there reigned cruel laws. Boys turned into beggars and thieves, and girls earned a living with their bodies. Most often, they did not die a natural death, but ended their lives on the gallows. At best, they were incarcerated.
They even want to involve Oliver in the underworld. Ordinary boy from the street, whom everyone calls the Artful rogue, promising the protagonist protection and lodging for the night in London, takes him to a buyer of stolen goods. This is the godfather of local swindlers and thieves Fagin.
In that crime novel Charles Dickens simply portrayed the London criminal society. He considered it an integral part of the then metropolitan life. But the writer tried to convey to the reader main idea that the soul of a child is initially not prone to crime. After all, the child in his mind personifies illegal suffering and spiritual purity. He's just a victim of that time. It is this idea that the main part of the novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is devoted to.
But at the same time, the writer was concerned about the question: what influences the formation of a person’s character, the formation of his personality? Natural inclinations and abilities, origin (ancestors, parents) or is it the social environment? Why does someone become noble and decent, and someone vile and dishonorable criminal? Can he not be soulless, cruel and vile? In order to answer this question for himself, Dickens introduces storyline novel image of Nancy. This is a girl who got into the criminal world at an early age. But this did not prevent her from remaining kind and sympathetic, able to show sympathy. It is she who is trying to prevent Oliver from taking the wrong path.
The social novel by Charles Dickens "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is a true reflection of the most topical and burning problems of our time. That is why this work very popular among readers and since its publication has managed to become popular.
In the novel The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens builds a plot in the center of which is the boy's encounter with an ungrateful reality. The protagonist of the novel is a little boy named Oliver Twist. Born in a workhouse, from the first minutes of his life he remained an orphan, and this meant in his position not only a future full of hardships and hardships, but also loneliness, defenselessness against the insults and injustice that he would have to endure. The baby was frail, the doctor said that he would not survive. Dickens, as an enlightening writer, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses to help and support those who were born poor and therefore doomed to deprivation and humiliation from the cradle. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman. The workhouses, which were supposed to provide ordinary people with work, food, shelter, actually looked like prisons: the poor were imprisoned there by force, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, dooming them to slow starvation. Not for nothing, after all, the workers themselves called the workhouses "bastille for the poor." From the workhouse, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker; there he runs into Noah's orphanage boy Claypole, who, being older and stronger, constantly humiliates Oliver. Soon Oliver escapes to London. Boys and girls who were of no use to anyone, by chance finding themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they fell into the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, the girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows. This novel is criminal. Society of London criminals Dickens portrays simply. This is a legitimate part of the existence of capitals. A boy from the street, nicknamed the Artful Rogue, promises Oliver lodging and patronage in London, and leads him to a buyer of stolen goods, the godfather of London thieves and swindlers, the Jew Fagin. They want to put Oliver on a criminal path. It is important for Dickens to give the reader the idea that the soul of a child is not prone to crime. Children are the personification of spiritual purity and unlawful suffering. A large part of the novel is devoted to this. Dickens, like many writers of that time, was concerned about the question: what is the main thing in shaping the character of a person, his personality - the social environment, origin (parents and ancestors) or his inclinations and abilities? What makes a person what he is: decent and noble, or vile, dishonorable and criminal? And does criminal always mean vile, cruel, soulless? Answering this question, Dickens creates in the novel the image of Nancy - a girl who got into the criminal world at an early age, but retained a kind, sympathetic heart, the ability to sympathize, because it is not in vain that she tries to protect little Oliver from a vicious path. Thus, we see that the social novel by Ch. Dickens "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is a lively response to the most topical and burning problems of our time. And in terms of popularity and appreciation of readers, this novel can rightfully be considered a folk novel.
