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Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

or

A Parish Boy’s Progress

Who can possibly resist Oliver Twist? Any British school child, upon hearing the name Oliver
will spout forth the most famous quote of all Dickensian time,
“Please sir, I want some more
...
At the age of nine he
went to live with an undertaker where he was cruelly treated
...
After a street robbery
went wrong, Oliver was cared for by the kindly Mr
...
Oliver was accidentally shot while breaking into the
Maylie’s house and later recovered there, once again free of Fagin
...
Monks plotted to recapture him
...
Upon discovering her ‘betrayal’, Sikes murdered Nancy
...
Monks had been trying to turn Oliver into
a criminal to discredit him, thereby pocketing the entire inheritance
...


Summary chapter by chapter (more or less!)
Chapters 1-7:
The story begins in the workhouse where a boy is born
...
The first nine years of his life are spent in the terrible conditions of cold
and hunger that prevailed in the workhouse
...
Oliver suffers further mistreatment at the hands of Noah Claypole, an employee, and
Mrs Sowerberry
...


Chapters 8–14: Oliver sets off on foot for London
...
Dawkins leads Oliver to a
house of unimaginable filth, and introduces him to an ugly old man, Fagin
...
One day, Oliver asks if he can go to ‘work’ with the
other boys and it is then that he understands they are all thieves
...
Brownlow
...
Mr
...
Fagin and his evil friend Bill Sikes are informed of this development and make plans to
get Oliver back, with the help of Bill’s girlfriend, Nancy
...
Brownlow’s house, which is very clean and
comfortable
...
On the way to the shop, Oliver is captured by Bill Sikes and Nancy and taken back to
Fagin’s house
...
Sikes and Fagin plan a robbery in a
country house, and they choose Oliver as the boy they need to enter the house through a small
window
...

Sikes grabs him and runs away, but then drops him in a field
...
A doctor is called to
attend to Oliver’s wound
...
Maylie, nurse
Oliver through a fever
...
Then, one night when
he is half asleep, he thinks he sees Fagin and another man at his window and screams
...
Bumble receives a visitor, Mr
...
Monks questions Bumble about
Oliver, and wants to see a woman who knows something about Oliver’s mother
...
Monks then
throws this into the river
...
She
decides to tell Rose Maylie, who is now in a London hotel with Oliver
...
Nancy arranges to meet Rose
on London Bridge on Sunday night
...
Noah Claypole, who is hiding nearby, overhears the conversation and runs
to tell Fagin
...

Chapters 48–end: Sikes decides to leave London, but returns with plans to escape to France
...
Brownlow tells Monks what he believes
happened in the past
...
He planned to marry her, but died suddenly
...
Monks’s father left a will
giving half of his property to Oliver, a will that Monks’s mother then destroyed
...
Monks admits to everything
...


The (geographical) journey that Oliver took – Places (Now and Then)
in Oliver Twist:
These places can be noted (in the journal) as they are encountered
...
Sowerberry, he walked 70
miles to Barnet, a small town 11 miles north of London
...

Whitechapel : a built-up inner city district located just over 3 miles east of Charing Cross
...

Oliver was taken to this part of East London after having been recaptured by Sikes
and Nancy
...
When Oliver
starts his “expedition” to Chertsey with Sikes, he leaves from Bethnal Green
...
Maylie lives here; Oliver is
abandoned here after his failed attempt at burglary
...

Mr
...
Paul’s Cathedral: the main cathedral in central London; designed by Sir Wren and built
after the great fire of London
...

When Fagin is imprisoned, and about to be hanged at the Newgate prison, he too
hears the bells
...

This is where Nancy, Mr
...
Their
conversation is overheard by Claypole, and reported to Fagin
...

Bill Sikes crosses these hills as he flees London, having killed Nancy
Jacob’s Island: a now gentrified, well-developed location, this impoverished and unsavory
area was described by Dickens as "the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the
many localities that are hidden in London"
...
Executions which were public and took place every Monday
morning always drew considerable crowds
...


Most of the CHARACTERS – in short
Oliver Twist: good, kind-hearted, mistreated, orphaned
...

Fagin: greedy, vicious, villainous-looking, the leader of a gang
of boy thieves, he is a very old man and a very nasty piece of
work
...

Nancy : young, a prostitute (with a sort of heart of gold?) she
tried to save Oliver in betraying Fagin and Sikes
...

Sikes : In his thirties, a violent burglar and thief, in cohorts with Fagin
...

Rose Maylie: Mrs
...
An orphan, taken in by Mrs
...

Mr
...

Mr
...

Edward Leeford: Edward is Oliver’s half-brother, called “Monks” for most of the novel; offers
to pay Fagin to corrupt Oliver, wanting Oliver’s inheritance
...

Mrs
...
In her
kindness, she takes Oliver in
...

Charley Bates: a sprightly young friend of the Dodger’s, another of Fagin’s boys, very
excitable, often laughs
...

Mrs
...
Bumble, matron of the workhouse where Oliver was born; a widow
for twenty-five years, she ends up marrying, dominating and humiliating Mr
...

Mr
...
He agrees to help the
ladies try to protect Oliver
...
Bedwin: Mr
...
Brownlow’s books
and money
...
Grimwig: an old friend of Mr
...

Noah Claypole; a charity-boy with a fierce look; works for the undertaker, enjoys bullying
Oliver; steals from the Sowerberrys , runs away to London, joins Fagin’s gang
...
Maylie’s son, about 25, has a frank, handsome face, an easy demeanor,
deeply in love with Rose; first ambitious, he chooses to become a country cleric so that he
will be on Rose’s level, and she will agree to marry him
...
Giles; a fat man, works as butler and steward to Mrs
...

Toby Crackit; Bill Sikes’s partner in crime, flashy and always convincing servants to help him
and Sikes break in
...
Sowerberry: undertaker, a tall, gaunt man, takes Oliver on as an indentured servant
...

Mrs
...

Mrs
...

Mrs
...
She steals a locket from Oliver’s dead mother,
which holds the key to his identity
...
A solution is to
simply choose excerpts which will be read and studied by the student
...

To overcome this problem of complexity, tell the students to keep a “character journal”
consisting of a page, divided into four columns:
Character

Location

Relation to Oliver

Good or Bad influence on Oliver

As each character is introduced, a page is made, and notes on the following are taken:
conflicts, climaxes, resolution and resolutions that affect each character
...

These journals can be used to create a time line, or chain of events
...


A few THEMES in OLIVER TWIST:





Poverty and the lower classes
The treatment of children
Purity in a Corrupt City
Criminality

SUGGESTIONS FOR (pre or early) reading ACTIVITIES:
It goes without saying that our French students will need knowledge of how Victorian
society was organized, and what Victorian London was like
...
After some (internet?) research,
they will make a short, oral presentation to the rest of the class who will take notes so as to
better understand the novel
...

Role Play
Have groups of 3 students role play the scene when Oliver asks for more food
...

Chapters 8-14
Mini debate : groups of 4 students
1
...
)
2
...

Chapters 15-22
Creative note-taking and oral expression:
Imagine what Oliver will tell Mr
...
and Mrs
...


Chapters 23-38
Creative writing
1
...
Write his diary
...
Oliver has a bad dream about Fagin
...
Your teacher will read to the class, who will guess who
had this dream
...
Nancy and Rose 2 very different backgrounds – they meet and ask each other
about their childhood, parents, favorite activities, her job, her house, everyday
problems
...
Claypole and Sikes – act out the conversation that they had, paying attention to
the emotions and attitudes they would have had
Chapters 48-end
GroupWork –
1
...
Monks’ confession or Admitting to a Heinous Plot
Act out the scene IN YOUR OWN WORDS
 Monks
 Oliver
 Mr Brownlow
 Mr Grimwig
 Mr Bumble
 Mrs Bumble
 Rose

OLIVER – THE MUSICAL
Still playing in Great Britain, ‘Oliver!’ is also
still a brilliant success
...

Nine-year old Oliver is taken to the workhouse where the
rapacious benefactors starve the children
...
Oliver pulls the short straw, asks
the famous question and is marked out a troublemaker
by the powers that be, who hastily pack him off to an
undertaker, where he is treated cruelly so runs away to
London
...
The boy is going one way to the noose
...


The film is long (3 hours) and while not quite true to the original plot, it does have a central
theme that was so dear to Dickens – despite really bad influence and far too much
suffering, Oliver’s pure-heartedness is not tainted, nor does he change into a ‘bad’ person
...
For
example, the Maylies don’t exist in the film at all, which results in Fagin and his gang being
wicked and evil just for the sake of it! However, the beauty of English countryside, and the
misery, dirt and poverty of parts of Victorian London are well conveyed
...

 Have students (in groups) draw up a list of the characters that they consider essential
to the plot? Each group defends its list to the others
...
Have the
students watch the scene where Oliver is guided by the Artful Dodger from sunny,









main thoroughfares to the backstreets of London
...
Which
of the two is more realistic?
Violence:
o Nancy is brutally murdered by Sikes
...
She lives with a far
older man – Dickens himself was criticized for this sordid situation
...
However, Oliver
Twist has been filmed throughout the ages, as witness:
 there were FOUR silent films made between 1909 and 1922
 1933 first talking version
 1948 film by David Lean
 1974 an animated movie
 1982 film starring George C Scott as Fagin
 Two television movie adaptations in 1982 and 1997



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