Oliver Twist

When I was in intermediate school, as that's what it was called at the time, I performed in a little musical that you might have heard of called Oliver. While in Oliver (I played the part of the Second Bobby something...it was a cop, which became a part I played frequently) I read a little kid's version of Oliver Twist. So going into this book, not only did I know the basics of the story, as I think many people know the basic story of Oliver Twist, but I thought that I had a pretty good handle of what was going to happen.

Well, let's just put it this way, the musical is wrong and the kid's book leaves some stuff out. Well, the musical also leaves stuff out. The basic story is that a child is born, his mother dies, he is named Oliver Twist, put in an orphanage that treats him (and all the children) badly, he takes a job at an undertaker's (and by takes read: is forced), he runs away to London, falls into a band of thieves, escapes, gets dragged back in, escapes again, all the while trying to discover who his family is, although we have already managed to figure out who he is related to.

Along the way he runs into many different characters, some good, some questionable. Now if you are familiar with the musical, he meets many of the same characters, though they are treated and introduced quite differently. For instance, Fagin is this happy character who we love in the musical. However, in the book he is this evil coneiving character that we hate. Likewise is the Artful Dodger, who is a not quite as questionable as Fagin, but not exactly the nicest character, though by no means evil. Nancy, a member of Fagin's gang, much to her distaste, is about the same, as is Bill Sykes, the bully and spiteful character of the book. There are also a couple of new characters that are introduced and many that are introduced considerably earlier. Unlike the musical, which has a deux ex machina at the end (if I remember properly), the book all leads up to a nice and clean ending in which the fate of all the characters of the story is explained so you are left with no questions as to what happens to who.

In the terms of a story, it's interesting, if a little repetitive to hear Oliver constantly complain, whine and cry his way through the novel. My biggest complaint is that it suffers the same problem that all serial novels from the 1800s suffers. There is too much that is really unimportant to the overall plot of Oliver. It's written in terms of a biographer and Dickens more than once references the reader as the biographer. Would I suggest that someone read it? Absolutely. Not only is it a classic and Dickens a master of the English language, but it's just one of those books that you should have under you belt.

Moral of the Story: Don't be an orphan, it sucks. And if you are an orphan, stop crying, and find your, undoubtedly, rich relatives.