Oliver Twist (Classics Collection (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.).)

Rating:
Summary: A Page-Turner
Review: A novel of this size can be daunting for the reader. "If I start this book, I'm going to have to spend the next month finishing it". That's what I thought anyway. But in Oliver Twist I sailed through the pages. It's rare that a classic, and I have read many of them, becomes a page-turner but this one did. Maybe I was lucky in not having seen the film versions prior to the reading of the book because I desperately wanted to find out what happened to Oliver and the multitude of other brilliantly written characters who inhabit the pages of Dickens' classic.

The plot is simple. A boy escapes his orphan home to live in London with a group of thieves and pickpockets. He's saved from this depraved life by a kindly, lonely old gentleman. But the villains, Bill Sykes and especially Fagin, fear that the boy may rat them out and so they kidnap him back. Can Oliver make it back to the life he deserves?

Oliver's story is not a very originally one, but it is enlivened by some of the greatest characters I've ever seen written. My personal favourites and there are many, are Noah Claypole who becomes a principle player and a very funny one at that, near the book's conclusion; and Mr. Brownlow, who's catchphrase "I'll eat my own head" had me bursting into laughter.

The book is diminished by its excessive sentimentality at the conclusion. Its female characters, apart from the courageous Nancy, are written in a golden light so as to become fantasies rather than the gloriously dirty reality of their male counterparts. A sub-plot between Mary and her boyfriend is ridiculously excessive.

Against these weaknesses, the book is a triumph of character. Often memorably played on screen, the two villains have become more famous than the title character, who is slightly simpering. Fagin is deliciously smarmy and Sykes is evil incarnate. They get their comuppance in justifiably brutal fashion. Dickens like most of us was a sucker for a happy ending.

Rating:
Summary: Literary quality does not exist
Review: Anybody who claims that Oliver Twist is not a good novel should be ashamed of themselves. First of all, Mr. Dickens wrote this in 1838 WHEN HE WAS TWENTY-FOUR! To all of you people who claim that this novel is boring and the worst book they ever read, let me ask you this one question - do you think you can write this well at 24 years of age? I think not. So, you basically have no right to criticize this novel. As for its not being as good as Mr. Dicken's later works, you must remember that he had less experience at twenty-four then he did when he published his other wotks. All in all, I liked it much better than A Christmas Carol.

Rating:
Summary: i thorly loved it!
Review: Being Jewish, I don't have a great amount of love for this book (even though I love Dickens). Still, it's a masterpiece, and a very iconic and great one at that. Oliver Twist may not be a great character, but Dickens writes a wonderful story around him. This is a dark yet melodramatic novel with one of Dickens' best plots. The story moves a long at a slow but deliberate pace, and there's quite a few twists and turns - as well as a happy ending. Shame about Fagin though, even though he is a great character. This book is a must for any Dickens fan, as hard as it may sometimes be to swallow.

Rating:
Summary: To Jill Piangerelli
Review: I read Oliver Twist for a college class and didn't really expect to like it. It was going to be one of those long, dull Victorian meganovels. I was wrong. Oliver Twist was surprisingly undated. The issues Dickens is analyzing and the societal practices he ridicules are very much debated in this day. The humor is still vibrant as is his rage. The plot and characterizations are pretty thrilling, too.

The novel is, obviously, the story of Oliver Twist, an innocent orphan who has to fight the evils of society in order to attain a place of happiness. Most notable among his enemies are Mr. Bumble at the workhouse, Fagin the founder of a crime organization that ensnares Oliver, Sikes the murderer, and Monk the mysterious figure in the background. Oliver must use his strength of character and purity, along with the sacrifices of Nancy, and the support of some wealthy people he encounters to fight his way to freedom.

Dickens's writing is wonderful. His descriptions of the society's treatment of the poor are alive with biting humor and scorn. The protagonist is memorable and loveable. The ending is slightly weak but is, for the most part, satisfying. Overall, Oliver Twist is the classic that it is supposed to be (or better), and is well worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Oliver Twist: The Exception to Prove the Rule
Review: People will often say that the exceptions will prove the rule. While instances of this occurrence are difficult to come by, the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens represents one of those instances. In the novel, the main point that Dickens tries to make is that the common 1830's stereotypes of the poor were incorrect. He instead claims that the experiences a person goes through growing up affect whom they become, not that a person of a certain status is inherently good or evil. While this theme holds true for most characters in the novel it does not apply to the protagonist Oliver. Oliver throughout the story is portrayed as good despite the way he was raised from birth. This implies that he has some form of inherent good, which goes against the theme Dickens was attempting to portray in the novel. While most contemporary critics would see this as being somewhat hypocritical, the audience that Dickens was targeting would see it as revolutionary. At the time of his writing, his intended audience was the English middle-class. He felt the stereotypes imposed by people of this class were immoral. Unfortunately, the only way he could truly reach this audience was to portray this poor orphan boy as a saint. In doing so, he was able to counteract the notions of the wealthy that the poor are inherently evil. Once the audience was to this point, which occurs fairly early in the book, they would now be more receptive to the deeper characters of Nancy and Charley Bates who are inherently good despite their life of crime and poverty.

Rating:
Summary: POOR LITTLE TWIST
Review: Right off the bat, I've never been a fan of Dickens. To me, there's always been something mercenary about his writing due to the fact that his novels were written to be serialized in magazines of his time. From one week to the next, he was just winging it, creating it as he went. While his improvisation is impressive, it lended itself to bloatedness and inefficency. I've read or tried to read about 5 of his works and never liked the writing. Despite that, I've tried to keep a positive outlook about the guy. I mean, with his status in the Western canon, maybe I just wasn't getting it. Thankfully, I really enjoyed Oliver Twist. Finally, a book of his that I liked.

Oliver Twist is an orphan whose father is unknown and whose mother died during childbirth. Consequently he is raised in the equivalent of the 19th century English welfare system. His raising by the state is despicable. The powers that be in the government of that time, much like our government, had to deal with the problem of indigents taking advantage of the welfare system. They made the homeless shelters and lunchlines so atrocious that the down-on-their luck would HAVE to look elsewhere for help. They went on the assumption that all the displaced were bums just looking for handouts. So the honest and dishonest were treated the same way.

Oliver Twist is a victim of this in that the daily meals he is served in the workhouse as a child are not enough to sustain a human being. Foolishly or bravely, one day he stands up and states the famous line, "Please sir, I want some more." In return for this he is bundled off to be an apprentice undertaker. After some trouble with another boy in the house, he runs away, in the process meeting The Artful Dodger, who indoctrinates him into a gang of pickpockets and thieves led by the Jew Fagin. The question is whether or not a boy who is basically good can escape from such an evil life, or whether he will fall victim to it.

This was a great book. The characters were great and the novel has a dark undertone that I wouldn't expect from Dickens. Unlike David Copperfield, this work does not exhaust itself through its very length. The ending tended to be a little too talky and clean.

Rating:
Summary: The Language is Easier to Understand
Review: Starting with Oliver's premature birth to a dying mother looked on by a gin-swilling nurse in a parish workhouse, Dickens tone is extremely satirical. Though his meanings are clear, his craftsmanship with the English language is in rare form in the beginning of Oliver Twist. The "distinguished and enlightened gentlemen" who's reform policies for the workhouse are raked over the coals in glowing language represent an unusual type of Dickens character for me. Usually even Dicken's villains are multi-faceted characters whose motives we understand though disapprove of. Here, the Directors of the parish who eventually pay to get rid of Oliver, are difficult to conceive of. The hardships of the workhouse inmates, more especially what seems like intentional starvation, seem hard to believe though as I read this book, the death of a foster child in New Jersey from starvation brought to light many things going on in twenty-first century reality which had seemed implausible in this nineteenth century novel. The satirical language is often humorous though the subject matter is not and makes the account more palatable. The first of the book is spent in this way which seems really to be more of Dicken's social commentary than pure story line.

In true Dickens style, each of the characters Oliver meets throughout the story are part of a larger, more elaborate plot line that the story is ever trying to unfold. After being apprenticed to the coffinmaker Mr. Sowerberry, he is taunted by the charity boy - Noah Claypole - until he makes a break for London. Accidentally falling into the clutches of local fence Fagin whose aim it is to turn him to a life of crime, Oliver struggles to break free with the help of various good hearted people he befriends along the way despite his situation. It is only through their help who believe in him against all odds that we find that Fagin's attempts to make Oliver into a thief or at least believe that he has broken the law is not entirely the result of chance. As a shadowy figure going by the name of Monks attempts to remove proofs of Oliver's origins, it is up to his new friends to piece together the puzzle of Oliver's life and help him to break free once and for all from the poverty of his existence.

Until Oliver's friends get involved, I wasn't entirely grabbed by the story line but I don't know if that was from my inability to connect with the workhouse characters or my familiarity with the early part of the story. Once they got involved and I was into a part of the story I knew nothing about, I did really get into it. Like A Tale of Two Cities, I would say that this one starts a little slow but takes off towards the middle. Unlike that novel, however, its lacks the profound nobility, with some characters having little value except as a vehicle in the commentary (like Mr. Bumble). The Tale of Two Cities was not an out and out social commentary (it was hidden well within the folds of the pages) but I would have to say that Twist is. It is a good story, well worth reading, but its lasting value is not in the character of the orphan Oliver - it is in the passion of the author against the wrongs of the then welfare system. It seems more to me to be a moralism: a tale to remind us of ourselves and to guard against the mistakes of the past and to ensure the lives of the vulnerable in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Thieves, Murderers and all of their Ilk
Review: This book surprised me, not by the quality of its writing, which one can expect from Charles Dickens, but by the violent, lusty primal quality of the story. This is no dry musty tome, but a vital novel that arouses both passion and intellect. A literal page turner, I found myself having more than one sleepless night when I just couldn't put it down.

Inside are some of the major characters in the realm of fiction; Fagin and his gang of child thieves, including the Artful Dodger. Nancy, the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold. Master Charles Bates (was this a pun even then?) Bad Bill Sikes, who shows the darker edge to all of this dangerous fun, and the innocent, pure Oliver Twist, who is the very definition of nature over nurture.

A great book, and one that I am glad to have finally read.