About Author:
Charles Dickens was the well-loved and prolific British author of numerous works that are now considered classics.British novelist Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. Over the course of his writing career, he wrote the beloved classic novels Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. On June 9, 1870, Dickens died of a stroke in Kent, England, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.
Theme of the novel:
1)The Failure of Charity
2)Purity in a Corrupt City
3) The Countryside Idealized
About Novel:
Oliver Twist is born in
a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother,
whose name no one knows, is found on the street and dies just after
Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in
a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a
workhouse for adults. After the other boys bully Oliver into asking
for more gruel at the end of a meal, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle,
offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the
workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish
chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker,
Mr. Sowerberry. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah Claypole,
makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, Oliver attacks
him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away
at dawn and travels toward London.
Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets
Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the
London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is
a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him.
After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing
mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief
from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off. He
is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft. Mr.
Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish
Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is
struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that
hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two
young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture
Oliver and return him to Fagin.
Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver
is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken
in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted
niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with
them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks
are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s
mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and
destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets
secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member
of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s
disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London.
Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently
hangs himself while trying to escape.
Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts
Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It
is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr.
Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair
with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver
all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived
of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks
to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered
that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin
is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and
they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.
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