Oliver Twist is
the story of a young orphan, Oliver, and his attempts to stay good in a society
that refuses to help. Oliver is born in a workhouse, to a mother not known to
anyone in the town. She dies right after giving birth to him, and he is sent to
the parochial orphanage, where he and the other orphans are treated terribly
and fed very little. When he turns nine, he is sent to the workhouse, where
again he and the others are treated badly and practically starved. The other
boys, unable to stand their hunger any longer, decide to draw straws to choose
who will have to go up and ask for more food. Oliver loses. On the appointed
day, after finishing his first serving of gruel, he goes up and asks for more. Mr. Bumble, the beadle, and the
board are outraged, and decide they must get rid of Oliver, apprenticing him to
the parochial undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. It is not great
there either, and after an attack on his mother’s memory, Oliver runs away.
Oliver
walks towards London. When he is close, he is so weak he can barely continue,
and he meets another boy named Jack Dawkins,
or the artful Dodger. The Dodger tells Oliver he can come with him to a place
where a gentleman will give him a place to sleep and food, for no rent. Oliver
follows, and the Dodger takes him to an apartment in London where he meets Fagin,
the aforementioned gentleman, and Oliver is offered a place to stay. Oliver
eventually learns that Fagin’s boys are all pickpockets and thieves, but not
until he is wrongfully accused of their crime of stealing an old gentleman’s
handkerchief. He is arrested, but the bookseller comes just in time to the
court and says that he saw that Oliver did not do it. The gentleman whose
handkerchief was taken, Mr. Brownlow,
feels bad for Oliver, and takes him in.
Oliver
is very happy with Mr. Brownlow, but Fagin and his co-conspirators are not
happy to have lost Oliver, who may give away their hiding place. So one day,
when Mr. Brownlow entrusts Oliver to return some books to the bookseller for
him, Nancy spots
Oliver, and kidnaps him, taking him back to Fagin.
Oliver
is forced to go on a house-breaking excursion with the intimidating Bill Sikes.
At gun point Oliver enters the house, with the plan to wake those within, but
before he can, he is shot by one of the servants. Sikes and his partner escape,
leaving Oliver in a ditch. The next morning Oliver makes it back to the house,
where the kind owner, Mrs. Maylie,
and her beautiful niece Rose, decide to protect him from the police and nurse
him back to health.
Oliver
slowly recovers, and is extremely happy and grateful to be with such kind and
generous people, who in turn are ecstatic to find that Oliver is such a
good-natured boy. When he is well enough, they take him to see Mr. Brownlow,
but they find his house empty—he has moved to the West Indies. Meanwhile, Fagin
and his mysterious partner Monks have not given up on finding Oliver, and one
day Oliver wakens from a nightmare to find them staring at him through his
window. He raises the alarm, but they escape.
Nancy,
overhearing Fagin and Monks, decides that she must go to Rose Maylie to
tell her what she knows. She does so, telling Rose that Monks is Oliver’s
half-brother, who has been trying to destroy Oliver so that he can keep his
whole inheritance, but that she will not betray Fagin or Sikes. Rose tells Mr.
Brownlow, who tells Oliver’s other caretakers, and they decide that they must
meet Nancy again to find out how to find Monks.
They
meet her on London Bridge at a prearranged time, but Fagin has become
suspicious, and has sent his new boy, Noah Claypole,
to spy on Nancy. Nancy tells Rose and Mr. Brownlow how to find Monks, but still
refuses to betray Fagin and Sikes, or to go with them. Noah reports everything
to Fagin, who tells Sikes, knowing full well that Sikes will kill Nancy. He
does. Mr. Brownlow has in the mean time found Monks, who finally admits
everything that he has done, and the true case of Oliver’s birth.
Sikes
is on the run, but all of London is in an uproar, and he eventually hangs
himself accidentally in falling off a roof, while trying to escape from the mob
surrounding him. Fagin is arrested and tried, and, after a visit from Oliver,
is executed. Oliver, Mr. Brownlow, and the Maylies end up living in peace and
comfort in a small village in the English countryside.
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