Charles Dickens. Summary of "The Adventures of Oliver Twist"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The Adventures of Oliver Twist was the second major work for the twenty-five-year-old Charles Dickens. This book is an important milestone in his life. After its publication, as they say, the British writer woke up famous.

The young classic did his job: he wrote a deliberately controversial book, risking that it would not be "accepted", wrote, according to Pasternak's later definition, creating "a cubic piece of smoking conscience." In addition to the exciting romantic plot typical of 18th century novels, Dickens' book has a social function, it reveals the plight of children of the lower strata, as well as the distancing of the authorities from solving their primary problems. Let's try to make it short. "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is a novel that contains a statement of an obvious social problem. The child is unprotected. His prospects: on the one hand -state institutions that steal childhood from people and deprive grown-up children of prospects, and on the other hand, the underworld that involves children, maims, and then kills them at a young age.

Ch. Dickens "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" sets out in chronological order. The boy was born in a workhouse. His father is unknown, and the young mother died during her first birth. His childhood is devoid of a smile, it was only one continuous discrimination with beatings, a half-starved existence and humiliation. From the government house he was sent as an apprentice to a master undertaker. Here he faced cruelty and injustice, so he fled.

He goes to London, where he falls into the sphere of influence of the leader of the thieves, the Jew Fagin. He stubbornly tries to teach the boy to steal. But for Oliver Twist, the moment when, in front of his eyes, the "mentors" the Artful Dodger and Charlie Bates "get" a handkerchief from a gaping gentleman, becomes a moment of truth. He, horrified, rushes away, and those around him catch him like a thief. Unfortunately, the summary does not convey all the emotions of the child.

The adventures of Oliver Twist are finally illuminated by a ray of light: to his happiness, Oliver, under these circumstances, meets Mr. Brandlow (who is still acting as a victim). This man later changed the fate of the boy, researching his pedigree and at the end of the book becoming his adoptive father. After repeated attempts to involve the boy inrobbery (Fagin contrives to kidnap him from Mr. Brandlow), he, wounded, finds himself in the family of Mrs. Maylie, who lives with the girl Rose (the younger sister of Oliver's late mother) as an adoptive niece. Suddenly, the girl Nancy, who lives with Figin's accomplice, comes to their house and tells the overheard dark plans of the criminals regarding the unfortunate boy.

Realizing that the boy's life and fate are in danger, Rose, in search of an assistant, accidentally meets Mr. Brandlow. He conducts a whole investigation, attracting other worthy people to him. The plot becomes more and more interesting - even the summary speaks of this. "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" acquires the features of a good detective. Gradually emerge "skeletons in the closet". It turns out that the deceased mother of Oliver Agnes, like the boy, after coming of age (provided that he grows up a decent person) received an inheritance from a lover who suddenly died in Rome. For the deceased Mr. Liford, a married man, the love of a girl was the only consolation. His wife was a real monster, and his son Edwin (who later became Monks) showed a tendency to a criminal path from childhood. Upon learning of the death of Liford in Rome, the legal wife arrived and destroyed the will, then appeared to the father of her mistress and threatened him, a weak man, to change his surname and run away with his two daughters from home. The disgraced Agnes runs away from her father to the workhouse, where she dies in childbirth with Oliver. Her father, believing that the eldest daughter committed suicide, also dies of grief. The youngest daughter is adopted into Mrs. Maylie's family.

Completing our summary. "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is a novel that shows the ins and outs of the underworld: meanness and self-interest. Having become a complete villain, Monks learns from his mother about his half-brother Oliver. He instructs Fagin to make a thief out of an innocent boy and, "stretching it through prisons", lead him to the gallows. The plan is hellish, but the legacy is at stake. Mr. Brandlow already knows about his identity, having come out to the hiding scoundrel even without the help of the brave Nancy, who was brutally killed by Fagin's accomplice. He "pins the scoundrel to the wall" by means of irrefutable facts and the threat of extradition to justice (in this case, the criminal is waiting for the gallows). By this, he forces Monks to leave the country without prospects for return and inheritance. Justice triumphs. The criminal who killed Nancy does not live to see the investigation, and the villain Fagin receives the gallows for his "merits" by a court decision.

The novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" after its publication stirred up a significant public outcry. The classic book raised a significant problem to the level of national discussion: destitute children, growing up in an indifferent society, turn into its dregs. They wander and commit crimes to survive.