Oliver Twist Character Analysis

Oliver Twist is about the whole society, a society that ascribe ultimate value to money which is in itself without value, and measures human actions and relationships by financial benefit. Almost all the characters of the novel indulge in the pursuit of materialistic gains and what links them to each other is the hunt for money. Characters who pursue money evade moral values and try to get money through deception, theft, prostitution and plotting. An aspect of this damaging pursuit of money is lack of human emotions which ' mechanize ' Dickens 's characters. K.J. Fielding observes that Dickens is very critical, " of the empty frivolities of society, and of the dreariness of contemporary life everywhere from the schoolroom to the city. "75

Some characters who belong to the poor class are depicted as villains, but Oliver Twist illustrates Dickens 's ideas of the dehumanized situation of the poor and his disapproval of patch up solutions for poverty as a social disease not criminalize the poor. Poor characters show endurance and fortitude in the face of want and hardship. Oliver Twist has bad characters and good characters. Fagin and Bill Sikes are bad characters. Oliver and Rosa are very good characters. Oliver represents the purity of children and in spite of the surrounding circumstances, he still pure. Also, Oliver Twist has good characters but they are live in bad circumstances like Nancy and Artful Dodger. Dickens blames the circumstances. He thinks that the circumstances are responsible to build the character of the man. He basically believed that most people were good at heart but that their good impulses could be distorted by social ills. In Folly Ditch, poverty is " repulsive " and " loathsome ". " every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage;--all these ornament the banks of Folly

126 . The rise and fall in society through the corrupting power of money is also an important theme of the novel. The novel which is of a simple structure, deals with the development of the protagonist Oliver. Dickens describes the phases of Oliver 's progress in terms of a child 's instinctive and therefore virtuous response to his natural surrounding and in terms of negation of childhood simplicity. Oliver is a member of that vast and cruel machine of the Victorian society with its obsession with money and class distinction. Oliver is presented as a Dickensian orphan who is harshly treated and 'brought up by hand ' (p.7). Oliver, a tormented and a neglected orphan, has been driven by want and poverty into the workhouse. Dickens begins describing Oliver’s birth in a way that