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I don't have much to say about this wonderful novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. It is one of only a few books that I don't hate anyone. Oh, there are some people in this book that I think are awful, but they are also fun. The book needs Mr. Bumble, what would it be without Fagin, or Bill Sikes, or the Artful Dodger. All these people are needed to make this a wonderful book. Besides, it is the only book beside A Christmas Carol that everyone in my family has heard of, they may not have read it, but they know it is a book by Charles Dickens, that is making progress. Until recently my sister only thought A Christmas Carol was a movie. Lots of movies for that matter.

But everyone knows that Oliver was an orphan who grew up in an orphanage, and wanting "more". Dickens was young when he wrote this, only 25 years old. And he was angry, angry and young isn't a good thing. He was angry about child labor, domestic violence, children being recruited as criminals, and workhouses he thought were prisons for the poor. He may have had the story of Robert Blincoe in his mind as he wrote, Blincoe was an orphan whose account of working as a child laborer was widely read at the time. Dickens' novel harshly criticized the Poor Law. In 1835 sample dietary tables were issued by the Poor law Commissioners for use in union workhouses. Dickens details the meagre diet of Oliver’s workhouse and points it up in the famous scene of the boy asking for more. Dickens also comments sarcastically on the notorious measure which consisted in separating married couples on admission to the workhouse: "instead of compelling a man to support his family [they] took his family from him, and made him a bachelor! " Like the other children, Oliver was "denied the benefit of exercise" and compelled to carry out the meaningless task of untwisting and picking old ropes although he had been assured that he would be "educated and taught a useful trade."

You know those mature novels of Dickens; his later works, no more caricatures, but full dimensional characters. I will take the caricatures and those lovely coincidences of Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop and David Copperfield every time. And the others are still wonderful but I have more fun with Oliver, and Nicholas, and even Little Nell.