Dickens Oliver Twist Analysis. Essay “Analysis of Dickens’ novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist”

In the novel The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens builds a plot centered on a boy's encounter with an ungrateful reality. Main character novel - a little boy named Oliver Twist. Having been born in a workhouse, from the first minutes of his life he was left an orphan, and this meant in his situation not only a future full of hardships and deprivations, but also loneliness, defenselessness in the face of the insults and injustice that he would have to endure. The baby was frail, the doctor said that he would not survive.

Dickens, as an educational writer, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses help and support to those who were born poor and are therefore doomed from the cradle to deprivation and humiliation. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman.

Workhouses, which were supposed to provide ordinary people work, food, shelter, in fact they were similar to prisons: the poor were forcibly imprisoned there, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, doomed to a slow death of starvation. It was not for nothing that the workers themselves called workhouses “bastilles for the poor.”

From the workhouse, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker; there he encounters the orphanage boy Noe Claypole, who, being older and stronger, constantly subjects Oliver to humiliation. Oliver soon escapes to London.

Boys and girls who were of no use to anyone, who by chance found themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they ended up in the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, girls began to trade own body, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows.

This novel is a crime novel. Dickens portrays the society of London criminals simply. This is a legitimate part of the existence of capitals. A boy from the street, nicknamed the Artful Rogue, promises Oliver an overnight stay and protection in London and leads him to a buyer of stolen goods, godfather London thieves and swindlers to the Jew Fagin. They want to put Oliver on a criminal path.

For Dickens, it is important to give the reader the idea that the soul of a child is not inclined to crime. Children are the personification spiritual purity and unlawful suffering. A considerable part of the novel is devoted to this. Dickens, like many writers of that time, was concerned with the question: what is most important in the formation of a person’s character, his personality - the social environment, origin (parents and ancestors) or his inclinations and abilities? What makes a person what he is: decent and noble or vile, dishonest and criminal? And does criminal always mean vile, cruel, soulless? Answering this question, Dickens creates in the novel the image of Nancy - a girl caught in early age into the criminal world, but retaining a kind, sympathetic heart, the ability to sympathize, it’s not in vain that she is trying to protect little Oliver from the vicious path.

Thus we see that social novel Charles Dickens's "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is a lively response to the most pressing and pressing problems of our time. And judging by the popularity and appreciation of readers, this novel can rightfully be considered a folk novel.

- 781.92 Kb

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education “Russian Economic University named after. G.V. Plekhanov"

Department of Philosophy

Philosophical analysis of the novel

Charles Dickens

"The Adventures of Oliver Twist"

Performed:

3rd year student

groups 2306

full-time education

Faculty of Finance

Tutaeva Zalina Musaevna

Scientific adviser:

Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy

Ponizovkina Irina Fedorovna

Moscow, 2011

Philosophical analysis of Charles Dickens's novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist"

"The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is the most famous novel by Charles Dickens, the first... English literature, the main character of which was a child. The novel was written in England, in 1937-1939. It began to be published in Russia in 1841, when an excerpt from the novel (Chapter XXIII) appeared in the February issue of Literary Gazette (No. 14). The chapter was entitled “On the influence of teaspoons on love and morality.” ».

In the novel The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens builds a plot centered on a boy's encounter with an ungrateful reality.

The main character of the novel is a little boy named Oliver Twist, whose mother died during childbirth in a workhouse.

He grows up in an orphanage at a local parish, whose funds are extremely meager.

Starving peers force him to ask for more for lunch. For this obstinacy, his superiors sell him to the undertaker's office, where Oliver is bullied by the senior apprentice.

After a fight with an apprentice, Oliver flees to London, where he falls into the gang of a young pickpocket nicknamed the Artful Dodger. The den of criminals is ruled by the cunning and treacherous Jew Fagin. The cold-blooded killer and robber Bill Sikes also visits there. His 17-year-old girlfriend Nancy sees a kindred spirit in Oliver and shows him kindness.

The plans of the criminals include training Oliver to be a pickpocket, but after a robbery goes wrong, the boy ends up in the house of a virtuous gentleman - Mr. Brownlow, who over time begins to suspect that Oliver is the son of his friend. Sykes and Nancy bring Oliver back into the underworld to take part in a heist.

As it turns out, behind Fagin is Monks, Oliver's half-brother, who is trying to deprive him of his inheritance. After another failure of the criminals, Oliver first ends up in the house of Miss Meili, who at the end of the book turns out to be the hero’s aunt. Nancy comes to them with the news that Monks and Fagin are still hoping to kidnap or kill Oliver. And with this news, Rose Meili goes to Mr. Brownlow’s house to resolve this situation with his help. Oliver then returns to Mr. Brownlow.

Sikes becomes aware of Nancy's visits to Mr. Brownlow. In a fit of anger, the villain kills the unfortunate girl, but soon dies himself. Monks has to open his dirty secrets, come to terms with the loss of his inheritance and go to America, where he will die in prison. Fagin goes to the gallows. Oliver lives happily in the house of his savior Mr. Brownlow.

This is the plot of this novel.

This novel fully reflected Dickens's deeply critical attitude towards bourgeois reality. "Oliver Twist" was written under the influence of the famous Poor Law of 1834, which doomed the unemployed and homeless poor to complete savagery and extinction in the so-called workhouses. Dickens artistically embodies his indignation at this law and the situation created for the people in the story of a boy born in a charity home.

Oliver's life path is a series of terrible pictures of hunger, want and beatings. By depicting the ordeal that befalls the young hero of the novel, Dickens develops a broad picture of English life of his time.

Charles Dickens, as an educational writer, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses help and support to those who were born poor and are therefore doomed from the cradle to deprivation and humiliation. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman.

Workhouses, which were supposed to provide ordinary people with work, food, and shelter, were in fact similar to prisons: the poor were forcibly imprisoned there, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, doomed to a slow death of starvation. It was not for nothing that the workers themselves called workhouses “Bastilles for the poor.”

And boys and girls who were of no use to anyone, who by chance found themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they ended up in the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows. From the above, we can conclude that the plot of this work is permeated with the problem of that time, as well as the present, a problem that concerns the moral education of a person. The writer believes that the problem of human upbringing is a matter for the whole society. One of the tasks of the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” is to show the harsh truth in order to force society to be fairer and more merciful.

The idea of this novel, I believe, can be attributed to one of the ethical problems studied in philosophy, to the problem of morality, morality.

The importance of moral education was emphasized by outstanding thinkers of different eras, from antiquity to our time. Speaking about philosophers who studied ethical issues, it is worth highlighting Pythagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, Bruno - the harbinger of classical bourgeois philosophy and ethics, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Aristotle, etc. Each of them had their own special point of view on this problem, their own views.

In order to understand the essence of the problem that permeates the work, I would like to turn to the period in which this work was written.

So, let's delve into the history of England. 1832, the adoption of parliamentary reform, which entailed, I would say, to a greater extent negative consequences for the lower class of society in England at that time.

The reform of 1832 meant a political compromise between the landed aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie. As a result of this compromise, as Marx wrote, the bourgeoisie was “recognized as the ruling class also in political terms.” (K. Marx, The British Constitution, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 11, ed. 2, p. 100.) However, its dominance did not become complete even after this reform: the landed aristocracy retained significant influence on the general government of the country and legislative bodies.

Soon after the reform, the bourgeoisie, having gained access to power, passed a law in parliament that worsened the already difficult situation of the working class: in 1832, the tax for the benefit of the poor was abolished and workhouses were established.

For 300 years in England there was a law according to which the poor were given “relief” by the parishes in which they lived. Funds for this were obtained by taxing the agricultural population. The bourgeoisie was especially dissatisfied with this tax, although it did not fall on them. The issuance of cash benefits to the poor prevented the greedy bourgeois from receiving cheap labor, since the poor refused to work for low wages, at least lower than the cash benefits they received from the parish. Therefore, the bourgeoisie has now replaced the issuance of cash benefits by keeping the poor in workhouses with a hard labor and humiliating regime.

In Engels’s book “The Condition of the Working Class in England” we can read about these workhouses: “These workhouses, or, as the people call them, Poor Law Bastilles, are such that they should scare away anyone who has even the slightest hope of getting through. without this benefit of society. In order for the poor man to seek help only in the most extreme cases, so that before he decides to do so, he exhausts all possibilities of doing without it, such a scarecrow was made from the workhouse, which only the refined imagination of a Malthusian can come up with (Malthus (1776 - 1834) - an English bourgeois economist, covering up the real causes of poverty and misery underlying the capitalist system, tried to prove that the source of poverty is more fast growth population in comparison with the growth of means for its subsistence. Based on this completely false explanation, Malthus recommended that workers abstain from early marriage and childbearing, abstinence in food, etc.)

The food in them is worse than that of the poorest workers, and the work is harder: otherwise the latter would prefer staying in the workhouse to their miserable existence outside it... Even in prisons, the food is on average better, so that the inmates of the workhouse often deliberately commit some kind of crime. some offense to go to prison... In a workhouse in Greenwich in the summer of 1843, a five-year-old boy, as punishment for some offense, was locked in the dead room for three nights, where he had to sleep on the lids of coffins. At the Hearn workhouse the same thing was done to a little girl... The details of the treatment of the poor in this institution are shocking... George Robson had a wound on his shoulder, the treatment of which was completely neglected. They put him at the pump and forced him to move it with his good hand, fed him the usual workhouse food, but, exhausted by his neglected wound, he could not digest it. As a result, he became more and more weak; but the more he complained, the worse he was treated... He fell ill, but even then his treatment did not improve. Finally, at his request, he was released with his wife and left the workhouse, parted with the most insulting expressions. Two days later he died in Leicester, and the doctor who witnessed his death certified that death occurred from a neglected wound and from food, which, due to his condition, was completely indigestible for him” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England). The facts presented here were not isolated; they characterize the regime of all workhouses.

“Can one be surprised,” continues Engels, “that the poor refuse to resort to public assistance under such conditions, that they prefer starvation to these Basstilles?...”

Thus, it can be concluded that the new poor law deprived the unemployed and the poor of the right to public assistance; from now on, receiving such help was conditioned by staying in a “workhouse”, where the inhabitants were exhausted by backbreaking and unproductive work, prison discipline, and starvation. Everything was done to force the unemployed to be hired for pennies.

The legislation of the early 30s exposed the class essence of English bourgeois liberalism. The working class, which took an active part in the struggle for parliamentary reform, became convinced that the bourgeoisie had deceived it and appropriated for itself all the fruits of the victory won over the landed aristocracy.

From the above, we can say that the Great French Revolution was truly great in the depth of socio-economic and political changes that it caused in its homeland and throughout Europe. But its moral results turned out to be truly insignificant.

Bourgeois political republics, if they improved morals in one respect, then worsened them in many other respects. The commodity economy, freed from the restraining shackles of feudal power and traditional - family, religious, national and other “prejudice”, stimulated the unlimited rampant of private interests, left the stamp of moral decay on all areas of life, but these countless private vices could not be summarized into one common virtue . The bourgeoisie, according to the vivid description of K. Marx and F. Engels, “left no other connection between people except bare interest, heartless “purity.” In the icy water of selfish calculation, it drowned the sacred thrill of religious ecstasy, knightly enthusiasm, and petty-bourgeois sentimentality. turned a person's personal dignity into exchange value..."

In a word, the real course of the historical process has revealed that capitalism, suitable for many large and small matters, is absolutely incapable of providing such a synthesis of the individual and the race, happiness and duty, private interests and public duties, which was theoretically substantiated, although in different ways, by philosophers New time. This, in my opinion, is the main philosophical idea of the work.

Description

"The Adventures of Oliver Twist" - the most famous novel Charles Dickens, the first in English literature whose main character was a child. The novel was written in England, in 1937-1939. It began to be published in Russia in 1841, when an excerpt from the novel (Chapter XXIII) appeared in the February issue of " Literary newspaper"(No. 14). The chapter was entitled "On the influence of teaspoons on love and morality."

The plot of the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” is structured in such a way that the reader’s focus is on a boy who is faced with an ungrateful reality. He is an orphan from the first minutes of his life. Oliver was not only deprived of all the benefits of a normal existence, but also grew up very lonely, defenseless in the face of an unfair fate.

Since Dickens is an enlightenment writer, he never focused on inhumane conditions, in which the poor people of that time lived. The writer believed that poverty itself is not as terrible as the indifferent attitude of other people towards this category of people. It was because of this misperception by society that the poor suffered, as they were doomed to eternal humiliation, deprivation and wandering. After all, workhouses, the creation of which was intended to provide ordinary people with shelter, food, and work, were more like prisons. The poor were separated from their families and imprisoned there by force, fed very poorly, and forced to do backbreaking and useless labor. As a result, they simply slowly died of starvation.

After the workhouse, Oliver becomes an undertaker's apprentice and a victim of bullying by the orphanage boy Noe Claypole. The latter, taking advantage of his advantage in age and strength, constantly humiliates the protagonist. Oliver escapes and ends up in London. As you know, such street children, whose fate no one cared about, for the most part became the dregs of society - vagabonds and criminals. They were forced to engage in crime in order to somehow survive. And cruel laws reigned there. Young men turned into beggars and thieves, and girls made a living with their bodies. Most often, they did not die a natural death, but ended their lives on the gallows. IN best case scenario they faced imprisonment.

They even want to drag Oliver into the criminal world. An ordinary boy from the street, whom everyone calls the Artful Rogue, promises the main character protection and an overnight stay in London, and takes him to a buyer of stolen goods. This is the godfather of local scammers and thieves, Fagin.

In this crime novel, Charles Dickens portrayed London's criminal society in a simple way. He considered it an integral part of the then metropolitan life. But the writer tried to convey to the reader main idea that the soul of a child is not initially prone to crime. After all, in his mind, a child personifies unlawful suffering and spiritual purity. He is simply a victim of that time. The main part of the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” is devoted to this idea.

But at the same time, the writer was worried about the question: what influences the formation of a person’s character, the formation of his personality? Natural inclinations and abilities, origin (ancestors, parents) or still the social environment? Why does someone become noble and decent, while others become vile and dishonest criminals? Can he not be soulless, cruel and vile? In order to answer this question, Dickens introduces storyline the novel's image of Nancy. This is a girl who got into the criminal world at an early age. But this did not stop her from remaining kind and sympathetic, capable of showing empathy. She is the one who tries to prevent Oliver from going down the wrong path.

Charles Dickens's social novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is a true reflection of the most pressing and pressing problems of our time. That is why this work very popular among readers and since its publication has managed to become popular.

In the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist,” Dickens builds a plot centered on a boy’s encounter with an ungrateful reality. The main character of the novel is a little boy named Oliver Twist. Having been born in a workhouse, from the first minutes of his life he was left an orphan, and this meant in his situation not only a future full of hardships and deprivations, but also loneliness, defenselessness in the face of the insults and injustice that he would have to endure. The baby was frail, the doctor said that he would not survive.

Boys and girls who were of no use to anyone, who by chance found themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they ended up in the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows.

This novel is a crime novel. Dickens portrays the society of London criminals simply. This is a legitimate part of the existence of capitals. A boy from the street nicknamed the Artful Rogue promises Oliver an overnight stay and protection in London and brings him to the buyer of stolen goods, the godfather of London thieves and swindlers, the Jew Fagin. They want to put Oliver on a criminal path.

For Dickens, it is important to give the reader the idea that the soul of a child is not inclined to crime. Children are the personification of spiritual purity and unlawful suffering. A considerable part of the novel is devoted to this. Dickens, like many writers of that time, was concerned with the question: what is most important in shaping a person’s character, his personality - the social environment, origin (parents and ancestors) or his inclinations and abilities? What makes a person what he is: decent and noble or vile, dishonest and criminal? And does criminal always mean vile, cruel, soulless? Answering this question, Dickens creates in the novel the image of Nancy - a girl who fell into the criminal world at an early age, but retained a kind, sympathetic heart and the ability to sympathize, because it is not in vain that she is trying to protect little Oliver from the vicious path.

Thus, we see that Charles Dickens’s social novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” represents a lively response to the most pressing and pressing problems of our time. And judging by the popularity and appreciation of readers, this novel can rightfully be considered a folk novel.

(No ratings yet)

Essays on topics:

Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse. His mother managed to take one look at him and died; before the boy's execution...
In the house of godmother Miss Burberry, where Esther Summerston spent her childhood, the girl feels lonely. She seeks to find out the secret of her birth...
The action takes place in mid-19th V. On one of the ordinary London evenings, something happens in the life of Mr. Dombey. greatest event –...
The novel “Anna Karenina” is one of greatest works Russian literature. The novel combines features characteristic of several types of novel creativity. First...