Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist: (Charles Dickens)

Overview

      Oliver is born in a workhouse in the first half of the nineteenth century. His mother dies during his birth, and he is sent to an orphanage, where he is poorly treated, regularly beaten and poorly fed. In a famous episode, he walks up to the stern authoritarian, Mr. Bumble, and asks for a second helping of gruel. For this impertinence, he is put out of the workhouse. He then runs away from the family who take him in. He wants to find his fortune in London, he falls in with a boy called Jack Dawkins, who is part of a child gang of thieves-run by a man called Fagin.

    He is brought into the gang and trained as a pickpocket. When he goes out on his first job, he runs away and is nearly sent to prison. However, the kindness of the person he tries to rob saves him from the terrors of the city gaol (jail) and instead he is taken into the man's home.

   He believes  that he has escaped Fagan and his gang, but Bill Sikes and Nancy, two members of the gang, force him back. Oliver is once more sent out on another job--this time assisting Sikes on a burglary. The job goes wrong and Oliver is shot and left behind. Once more he is taken in, this time by the Maylies, the family he was sent to rob, where his life changes dramatically for the better.

   But Fagin's gang comes after him again. Nancy, who is worried about Oliver, tells the Maylies what is happening. When the gang finds out about Nancy's treachery, they murder her.  Meanwhile, the Maylies reunite Oliver with the gentleman who helped him out earlier and who with the kind of coincidental plot turn typical of many Victorian novels-- turns out to be Oliver's uncle. Fagin is arrested and hanged for his crimes; and Oliver settles down to a normal life, reunited with his family.