Oliver Twist Book Review

Book Read: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

In this story, Oliver, the protagonist acts in a way I would probably never do in his circumstances. When he first saw the two boys steal the handkerchief from Mr. Brownlow, he was horrified. Even though if he continued doing that, he would be able to have food and water for his survival in the hands of Fagin, he placed moral virtue above all that and ran away. I would probably have in this scenario just gone along with the flow. This is even more astonishing as Oliver was a boy who had lived in poverty all his life. Another example is when he was on a robbery mission, he decided to try and risk his life and alert the family he was robbing.

The author wrote this story in 1839 and therefore the conditions then are very different from that of the present. In those days, the poor could just live on the streets and the poverty cycle for that group of people would continue for generations to come. However, today, the government of countries and cities better off like London, where this story is based, the poor are given adequate food and lodging, while the young are able to go to school and get an education.

The climax of this story to me is the part when Nancy gets killed by Sikes. I feel that this is the climax as out of all the crimes that occurred in this book, this is probably the worst of them all. Also, after this incident, all starts to go wrong for the “bad guys”.

I feel that the title of this book is good as it gives readers a good picture of what the whole story is about. It is of course about the life of Oliver Twist from birth to the time he is adopted by Mr. Brownlow.