The time period of the novel was set during the industrial revolution, where factories and work houses were common. Its main message is how badly the poor were treated in England. As for minor messages and worldviews, there wasn’t too much, though like most people of his time period and earlier, he portrayed Jews in a bad light. Fagin, one of the main villains, was a Jew, and he was portrayed as withered, miserly, and whiny.
My favorite character of the book would certainly not be Oliver. His personality was very blah and boring, and he did pretty much nothing in the book. Everything that happened in the book happened to him, he did hardly anything on his own. If it weren’t for his friends and enemies there would be no plot.
The lot fell on him to ask for more food. If it hadn’t he wouldn’t have done it on his own, and the story would not have started. He would have stayed in the workhouse the rest of his life. It was Mr. Bumble’s decision to sell Oliver as an apprentice to the coffin maker. Oliver would have remained there if an older apprentice hadn’t teased him about his mother. At this point Oliver does show actual personality and gets angry and attacks the older boy, but there isn’t anything special or unique about it. It’s a natural reaction.
Things continue to happen to Oliver instead of him doing actions himself. This wouldn’t necessarily be bad if Oliver had a personality. His character is plain. There isn’t anything unique about it, but at the same time he has no faults to make us relate to him.
Therefore my favorite character is not the main character, Oliver, but Nancy. Nancy was raised in filth and poverty and was far from being pure like Oliver was, but she did the right thing. She warned the people that Oliver was now happily living with that Fagin, Sikes and Monks were planning on kidnapping Oliver. Yet, when they offered her a chance to leave her life of poverty and crime, she refused because of her love for Sikes. Her diverse character makes her the most interesting to me, and sadly, like my most of my favorite characters, she ended up dying at the hand of Sikes who had thought she had betrayed him.
Overall it was an okay book, but not something I would choose to read. Seeing as the version I read was adapted, it took away the best part of a Dickens novel, his writing. Plus I already knew the storyline, which really takes away from a book, if the story or the writing aren’t highly enjoyable.
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