There is a
binary system in Oliver Twist that disconcerts the adult
reader, or is even unpleasant to him. Characters are black or white, and are very exagerated. In that sense, they are not "realistic" and they don't embody "human
nature", if they are seen as seperate
elements. The fundamental idea that must be found in
Oliver Twist to really understand it, is that all these elements are a whole. If they are apart they are less ,or not, meaningful anymore. The whole plot is constructed to mix up all elements together, and if you forget one of them you lose the most important : parrallels. The city of London is conceived as a mirror (or an anti-mirror) of
children's feelings. It would be more exact to
say that the
idea of London highlights details about children's mood. He creates a city mixed of the realistic London -its streets and areas- and the imaginary London -its hallucinations and burlesque scenes. There is a fine line between fantasy (which could be called "absurdity" with Dickens in that work), and realism (which is most of the time what we could call social-realism). There is also a complementarity between those very different elements. Nietzsche wrote in
The Wanderer and His Shadow<1>« L’observation vulgaire, imprécise ,voit partout dans la nature des contraires (comme par exemple « chaud et froid »), alors qu’il n’existe pas de contraire, mais seulement des différences de degré » . This is an angle of approach that can be chosen to study
Oliver Twist. In that case you keep the idea of "unity" of elements in mind and you get where Dickens wants to take us. Did he manage to create this ? To create the final unity that would allow us to say that this is a piece of
literature, not the work of a very talented but "inhuman" man ? In Oliver the reader finds innocence and kindness. He represents the concept of purity, which is part of childhood (and which is sometimes critized by the author). In Fagin, the Jew, the reader finds weakness and selfishness (yet by the end of the novel we can suspect some sympathy from Dickens for this character). In Bill, cruelty and violence. In Nancy, femininity and craziness. Of course characters are simplified, as in a tale. But the plot complicates everything and has to be entirely taken in account . Moreover this creates a great poetic contrast at some times, as everything is exagerated and put face to face, confronted to each other. What does this mean about children ? It means that they (and adults) are in constant struggle between … so many things: what they believe they should and shouldn’t do (Good and Evil? ), their desire of freedom and their infinite capacity to take it away from themselves, etc. It also means that they are in constant struggle with each other. And in those circumstances, the observation is not difficult to draw up: it is hard for an orphan to manage on his own. Because he, as an adult, can be upset, hopeless, or torn between several possibilites; the difference is that the adult knows (better, at least) how to react. And it is possible that Dickens chose to write this novel that way because he wanted to show how this period and what it implied could be inappropriate for a child. Of course a lot of characters' reactions couldn’t really be found in real life. But after all it is literature: the reader doesn’t expect the exact truth about facts. Realism is in itself a point of view, and it choses to tell about fact, and only fatcs. But is “life” that way ? Is human nature only made of facts ? Apparently not. The “charm” that can be found in children of
Oliver Twist is also made of fantasy, absurdity and exageration, because a child’s life is made of it too. And it is somehow “unrealistic” to say that they are not representative of “human nature”. The “control” Dickens has on his characters, is only the cwriter has to have if he wants to be coherent. The reader hopes to find something that will say something true to life to him, and as it has been explained above, he has the possibility to find it if he is sensitive to that kind of writing, but it a matter of taste and no judgement can be accepted on it.
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