Analysis on Oliver Twist

Analysis on Oliver Twist
    At the very beginning of this semester, I watched an impressive film called Oliver Twist. Out of deep curiosity and great interest, I lent this book from our library. The following is my personal immature understanding of the novel.

About the author and background information
    Oliver Twist is written by an English novelist Charles John Huff ham Dickens (Charles Dickens in short), who was born in Port sea, on England’s southern coast, on February 7, 1812. Unfortunately, Dickens went through an unpleasant and miserable life and suffered a lot. Dickens sets Oliver Twist in early 19th-century England, a time when long-held ideas and beliefs came under serious scrutiny. Profound changes brought about by the industrial revolution, religious uncertainty, scientific advancement, and political and social upheaval caused many Victorians to reexamine many aspects of their society and culture.[1] Industrialization drove many farm workers into the cities, where poor labor conditions and inadequate housing condemned most of them to poverty. The unprecedented increase in urban population fostered new and overwhelming problems of sanitation, overcrowding, poverty, disease, and crime in the huge slums occupied by impoverished workers, the unemployed, and the unfortunate. London slums bred the sort of crime dickens portrays in Oliver Twist.

Introduction
    Oliver Twist mainly talks about social life of London in the former part of 19th century. In 1834, the government issued the New Poor Law which established a system of workhouses for those poverty-stricken people. Young Oliver Twist, an orphan, spends his first nine years in a baby farm, a workhouse for children where only the strongest can survive. When Oliver runs away to London, he meets Jack Dawkins, a boy of his own age. Jack guided Oliver to join in a gang of youthful thieves and pickpockets headed by an evil criminal named Fagin. The author then renders a detailed and realistic...