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To me Oliver Twist is a primary example of life for the poor during the middle class. It also shows how life was during the Industrial Revolution and what some people had to do to survive. Oliver Twist is a story about a boy who works at a parish workhouse after his mother dies. While he is there he is barely feed any food and is over worked. As an orphan without any friends, known relatives, or other ways to survive he probably would have died if he hadn’t gotten thrown out and went to London and found his family. After he arrives to London he is saved from stealing an apple and possibly being caught by Dodger.
Afterwards Dodger takes him to the slums where he joins a group of thieves that work for Fiegin. Fiegin teaches the boys how to pick-pocket and puts a roof over their heads but sees them as nothing more than an investment. Even though this type of lifestyle is wrong is seems that it’s the only way that they are all staying feed. Other characters in the movie show how people are affected by the revolution. Sikes is an evil man who will do anything to get ahead. It is possible that he wasn’t able to make an honest or decent living because of the revolution.
His fate seemed appropriate in the end. Nancy is unlike most characters. She isn’t completely good like Oliver but she isn’t complete evil like Sikes. In the end she ended up dying to help Oliver and I think that’s what made her character seem so selfless. I think her character was most believable because she didn’t lose her humanity like most of the others seemed to. There is also Dodger. It seemed to me that he was happy with a life of crime and saw it as the only thing he could do even at the end of the movie. Oliver on the other hand seemed to be an exception.
Although he was abused and mistreated through out almost the entire movie he still remained kind and gentle. Throughout the movie I constantly saw how both sides lived. The middle class had clean spacious homes with a maid and a comfortable bed to sleep in compared to the lower class that were jammed together. They also had much more food. In the time that Oliver lived with Mr. Brownlow and Rose he had been cleaned, cared for, and somewhat educated. Even though they didn’t know that Oliver was really their relative they still treated him much better than the people at the workhouse did.
However the poor lived much more differently. They live in the slums in crowded houses where the air is full of smoke and the streets are full of trash. I’m also sure that a whole street would have to share an outdoor pump and a few outdoor toilets which must have made the area infested with diseases. Throughout the story I saw symbolism. The locket that Oliver refused to give appeared to be that last piece of hope he didn’t want to let go of. The bridge were it all ended also seem to symbolize two different worlds, the rich and the poor, meeting together.