CHARLES DICKENS
He was born in 1812, in Portsmouth. He had an unhappy childhood, since his father went to prison for debt,
so he had to work in a factory at 12 years old. These days of suffering were to inspire much of the content of
his novels.
When he realised that he had a talent for writing became a journalist at the parliament and law courts. He
adopted the pen name 'Boz' and wrote a collection of articles describing London people and scene called
Sketches by Boz.
Dickens's first novel is The Pickwick Papers, published in instalments reach of humor and satire. It describes
the adventures of a group of eccentrics traveling on English roads. He mixed pitoresque and comic elements.
Dickens's success continued with the novels Oliver twist, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit, which drew
on his own childhood and journalism.
He exposed the exploited lives of children in the slums and factories. Other novel, such as Hard Times, Great
Expectations, Black House, are set against the background of social issues, highlighting the conditions of the
poor and the working class.
He spent his last years travelling round giving theatrical readings of his own work. He died in 1870 and was
buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
The plot of Dickens novels
His novels were influenced by the bible, fairy tales and fables and nursery rhymes, by Gothic novels, and by
the 18th century novelists and essayists. His plots are well planned even if at times they sound a bit artificial,
sentimental and episodic. It includes many characters and parallel stories, with plots and subplots, intrigue,
mystery and incredible coincidences.
The setting of most of his novels was London: he knew and described it in realistic details. He was not a
revolutionary thinker but he was aware of the spiritual and material corruption so he became critical of
society.
Characters
Dickens created caricatures. He exaggerated and ridiculed the peculiar social characteristics of the middle,
lower and lowest classes. His female characters were weak and black and white. He created lively and
unforgettable characters, especial eccentrics, vagabonds, orphans. His character are taken from the middle
and lower classes. Their physical picture, clothes, gesture accent were captured by dickens. He was always
on the side of the poor and the outcast and shifted the social frontiers of the novel: the 18th century upper
middle class world was replaced by the one of the lower orders.
Upper classes and aristocratic characters are not well described and they tend to fall into stereotypes.
The fault attributed to Dickens is that they are divided into good and bad. It happens in his first novels.
A didactic aim
Children are often the most important characters in Dickens's novels. By giving instances of good children
and worthless parents or hypocritical adults he reverses the natural order of things by making children the
moral teachers instead of the imitators: the children became a model of behavior.
Dickens's task was to get the common intelligence of the country, in all its different classes alike, to alleviate
undeniable suffering.
Style
Dickens used a careful choice of adjectives, repetitions of words and structures, using hyperbolic and ironic
remarks. He was good to mix social criticism with the pathetic and comic. His principal force is his humor.
OLIVER TWIST
PLOT: It is about the economic insecurity and humiliation that Dickens experienced when he was a boy.
The name Twist represents the reversal of fortune that he will experience.
He is a poor boy of unknown parents, he is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. He is later sold to
an undertaker as an apprentice, but the cruel experiences led him to run away to London. There he falls into
the hands of a gang of young pickpockets, who try to make a thief out of him, but he was helped by an old
gentlemen. Oliver is eventually kidnapped by the gang and forced to commit burglary, but during the job he
