Holly Huffstutler

Dr. Walsh
LIT 232-002

Oliver Twist: Our Boring yet Effective Hero

In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens paints an effective picture of the lives of poor

children under the highly bureaucratic parochial system and the lives of criminals that

populated poor London. He does this through the use of brilliant sarcasm to create

interesting and lifelike characters at every of English society that is represented in his

story. The word ‘lifelike’ in this sense means to act like a human being. And human

beings tend to grow as the years pass. They are affected by the situations they encounter.

Their traumas and their triumphs form their characters. However, the title character of

Oliver is shown to possess none of these qualities. From the time he is brought to the

workhouse by Mr. Bumble to his adoptions in the end by his caring family, nothing

changes his attitude of wide-eyed trust and blandness. Oliver’s lack of human qualities is

by no means a failure of Dickens’s novel. His unshakable innocence acts as an excellent

foil for the multi-layered cynicism of everyone who crosses Oliver’s path and provides a

solid connection between the vast array of characters and experiences in this story.

In the ten years we know of Oliver Twist he is portrayed as perpetually childlike

and incorruptible, despite the fact that he’s had very little treatment that differs from

contempt, violence, or indifference. Oliver is thrown into every situation that you would

expect a person to be gradually hardened from: poverty, starvation, violence and

exposure to a criminal underworld populated by kids his age and younger. But Oliver

never gets hardened. With all the character has gone through the reader would be more

than willing to let any evidence of evil slide but this doesn’t happen because Oliver’s
dark side doesn’t exist. Dickens explains the enigmatic nature of Oliver’s character very

briefly and vaguely with this passage, “It cannot be expected that this system of farming

would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop…But nature or inheritance had

implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver’s breast” (21) In that statement is Dickens’s

justification for Oliver’s pure soul: that it is ‘inherited.’ Oliver is revealed to be linked

with people we are introduced to as good, pure, loving, responsible and most

importantly…upper class. Namely Mr. Brownlow and the Maylies. It is the ‘well-born’

(including Rose Maylie even though she doesn’t believe it) people in the novel who are

most capable of love and goodness in this story. Therefore the fact Oliver is a part of this

class is the only explanation that Dickens gives for his unswerving goodness.

Oliver’s ‘inherited’ goodness and unchanging personality is made apparent

throughout the novel. The reader is made aware of it when he is first brought before the

board (which Oliver is too teary-eyed to see, and bows to the table the board is sitting at0

and proceeds to cry unceasingly throughout this interview. The reader sees Oliver first as

a bawling newborn, then as a nine-year-old who cried because he was leaving home,

(‘home’ used in the loosest possible sense here) then cried some more because he was

“frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen” (24) and finally “sobbed himself to

sleep.” (25) Dickens’s assertion that “Oliver cried very naturally indeed”, (24) in

additions to being a huge understatement, shows the reader that Oliver hasn’t had the

ability to cry or be shocked by cruelty beaten out of him which would have been a very

human response.

In addition to his watery eyes a trait of Oliver’s that evidences Oliver’s lack of

personal growth (for better or worse) is his eternal trust. Or to be more judgmental about
it, his eternal gullibility. This is shown when he first meets the Artful Dodger and is

introduced to Fagin and the rest of his ‘pupils.’ Shortly after Oliver is introduced to Fagin

and Company the following occurs;

“the young gentlemen with the pipes came round him, and shook his hand very
hard especially the one in which he held his little bundle. One young gentleman
was very anxious to hang up his cap for him; and another was so obliging as to
put his hands in his pockets: in order that, as he was very tired, he might not have
the trouble of emptying them, himself, when he went to bed.” (66)

Oliver’s reaction to this is not noted; therefore one must conclude that he didn’t find

anything suspicious about all this. Even when he sees Fagin’s hidden box of treasures

while half-asleep he doesn’t question where I came from. Though at least in this case he

had the good sense to be confused by their presence.

“Oliver thought the man must be a decided miser to live in such a dirty place,
with so many watches: but, thinking that perhaps his fondness for Dodger and the
other boys, cost him a good deal of money.” (68)

Even when Fagin, Dodger and Charley are demonstrating for Oliver exactly how to “pick

a pocket or two” in “such a funny and natural manner, that Oliver laughed till the tears

ran down his face” it doesn’t occur to him what this all means. (70) In fact Oliver

doesn’t figure out what profession he’s been adopted into he’s out on the job. He sees

Dodger steal Mr. Brownlow’s handkerchief and then it all becomes clear. “In an instant

the whole mystery of the handkerchiefs, and the watches, and the jewels, and the Jew,

rushed upon the boy’s mind.” (73) Oliver is shocked by this insight because he measures

the world by his own purity.

While Oliver is unaware of his rose-colored perception of the people who

surround him, they unfortunately are. Fagin sees Oliver for the open, trusting person he is

and plans to use it to his advantage. When Bill Sikes questions why Fagin would want
him above all the other, more qualified, kids Fagin’s reason is because he sees the vast

difference between Oliver and them.

“Because they’re of no use to me, my dear…not worth the taking. Their looks
convict ‘em when they get into trouble; and I lose ‘em all. With this boy, properly
managed, my dears, I could do what I couldn’t with twenty of them” (137)

Fagin knows Oliver is so inclined to cling to anything you tell him that he can keep using

him until he gets caught and hanged. At which point he’ll be too brain-washed to turn

Fagin in.

It would be easy, considering how unrealistic Oliver is, to consider him the great

failure of Dickens’s novel. That would be missing the point. Because the character of

Oliver Twist isn’t a character at all, he’s a literary device, a very common one. He’s the

central character that all the other characters rotate around. Any story with this many

personalities floating around needs one stable point than connects them all. In this story

that is Oliver. He is an observer; vibrant and often violent experiences and personalities

don’t really affect him, they float over him and are recorded through him. Someone has

to be there to tell the story. And unfortunately unless we gain insight into the narrator’s

head these characters are usually very dull. These characters are set pieces, they hold

everything together. To give them too much life would distract from what’s really going

on in the story. And that is of course Dickens’s imaginative description of the world and

people that people that Oliver grows up with.

The world and those people are the second half of what Oliver is established to

facilitate the telling of. The story does this by showing the contrast by between him and

them, and in so doing shines a clearer light on them. The contrast is first established by

showing the visual distinction between him and Dodger. Where Oliver seems to have
been frozen at age five, Dodger is representative in the book of the kind of young

criminal who has had to grow up too fast and project a larger-than-life bravado just to

survive and prosper in his world. The contrast between Oliver and everyone else is

further established, in a most striking way, in the area of language. The underworld

characters of Oliver’s acquaintance speak in a language closer to Dickens’s narration of

the book. Language that’s complex and heavy with sarcasm and bitterness. Oliver on the

other hand tends to accept things at face value and usually doesn’t have a clue what

they’re saying. Causing the others (especially Charley Bates) to laugh at his naïveté: “I

never did see such prime company as that ‘ere boy; he’ll be the death of me. I know he

will” (129)

Oliver Twist is without a doubt the least emotionally developed figure in the

otherwise brilliant array of layered characters that fill the novel that bears his name.

However, as the reader gets enveloped in the vibrant world that Dickens creates in this

novel it becomes clear that Oliver is written one dimensionally for a reason. To focus the

numerous amount of characters and plotlines to one stable point; and to serve (with his

unbelievable perfection) as a foil for the lives and habits that were common in the

impoverished London Dickens hoped to expose. Judging by his own words: “ I confess I

have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil. I

have always believed this to be recognized an established truth.” (3)