Oliver’s Acrostic

Orphan
Loveable
Innocent
Victim
Easy mark
Rescued

Taken in
Waylaid
Injured
Saved
Triumphant

 

CSI London

Dickens did not hold back from describing every gory detail of Nancy’s murder and of Sikes’ reaction to the deed the following morning.

 He had not moved; he had been afraid to stir.  There had been a moan and motion of the hand/ and. with terror added to hate, he had struck and struck again.  Once he threw a rug over it; but it was worse to fancy the eyes, and imagine them moving towards him, than to see them glaring upward, as if watching the reflection of the pool of gore that quivered and danced in the sunlight on the ceiling.  He had plucked it off again.  And there was the body–mere flesh and blood, no more–but such flesh, and so much blood!  Chapter XLVIII

Dickens goes on to describe how Sikes tries to clean himself up after the ordeal.  The bloody spots on his clothing will not wash out, so he cuts them out and burns them in the fireplace.  He also burns the murder weapon: the club.  Dickens goes so far as to horrify his readers with the description of how there was some of Nancy’s hair on the end of the club.  The chapter sounds a lot like an episode of CSI.

Of the novels we’ve read so far, this is the first instance of murder.  Fight scenes in previous books (battle with Apollyon in PP and several skirmishes with DQ) are not this realistic.  Doesn’t it seem like Dickens, as an author, has crossed some sort of line?  This is extreme realism.  There is no glossing over details.  The reader is not left to imagine anything.  Dickens spells out a horrible scene quite clearly.

Later on in the chapter when Sikes is fleeing across the countryside, he is haunted by Nancy’s eyes.  I imagine that most readers are glad Sikes’ guilt is tormenting him.  Readers want him to suffer for the crime he committed.  Is this the reaction Dickens wanted?

 

Illustrated Olliver Twisted

I’ve decided to give myself an endorsement on my DIY Master’s Degree.  My endorsement shall be in “Children’s Adaptations of Classic Novels”: the faithful and the unfaithful.

Here’s the latest book. In addition to Oliver Twist, the book contains the following stories:

• Bleak House
• Great Expectations
• A Tale of Two Cities
• David Copperfield
• The Life and Times of Charles Dickens

I enjoyed the Usborne Illustrated Classics for Boys, but I take issue with this book of tales from Dickens.

Like the original story, Oliver is born in a workhouse to a mother who dies immediately after childbirth. 

Oliver grows up in the workhouse and says his famous, “Please sir, I want some more” line. 

The chimney sweep Gamfield is mentioned, but the appearance before the magistrate is omitted.  Oliver is apprenticed to Sowerberry and meets Noah Claypole. After fighting with Claypole, Oliver runs away to London and meets Dodger, Fagin, and Sikes.

Brownlow and his housekeeper are part of the story, but here’s where the minor changes become major changes.  The Maylie Family is never mentioned: not even once. And Grimwig?  He’s not in this book.

Prepare yourself for more changes!  When Oliver is shot during the house-breaking, it is Nancy who rescues him from the ditch where Sikes left him.  Nancy contacts Brownlow and brings Oliver to meet him on London Bridge.  They are followed by Sikes who shoots Nancy on the bridge. 

Sikes flees the gathering crowd by climbing on the roof of a nearby house.  Sikes is accidentally hung and the dog falls to his death.  I had to include the next illustration after yesterday’s post.

The book comes to a quick close when Brownlow produces Oliver’s mother Agnes’ locket.  He got it from Mr. Bumble’s wife Mrs. Mann.  Everything is quickly wrapped up and Oliver goes to live with Brownlow.

Remember Monks?  You wouldn’t from this tale.  He’s not included.

Oh, I get it… This story is from Usborne’s Illustrated (and incredibly, loosely based) Stories from Dickens.

I’ve enjoyed comparing the children’s books to the originals.  My two older children have read both of the Usborne Illustrated books that I’ve brought home from the library.  These little books are colorful and inviting, but I wonder if these adaptations are a good idea.  Someday in high school will they come back to me and ask, “There are four parts to Gulliver’s Travels?”  Or perhaps they’ll say, “Reading that kid’s version of Oliver Twist when I was eight was a little like watching a based-on-a true-story-made-for-tv movie: the character names were the same, but that was where the similarities ended.”

 

“The Pursuit and Escape”

 “The Pursuit and Escape” is what Dickens titles chapter L of Oliver Twist.  Have you reached this chapter yet, readers?  If not… consider this a spoiler alert and come back to this post when you’ve finished the chapter.

You’re done already?  Wow, you are fast readers.

Chapter L is the chapter where Bill Sikes flees to the “house” on Jacob’s Island.  The angry crowd finds him there.  He plans to escape off the roof using a rope. 

“At the very instant when he brought the loop over his head previous to slipping it beneath his arm-pits…”

You remember what comes next: Sikes’ accidental hanging.  This is almost as gruesome as Nancy’s death. 

Let me show you the original illustrator’s depiction of this chapter.  George Cruikshank called it “The Last Chance”.  We see Sikes on the roof with his dog.  If we look closely, we can see a few faces in the windows of the nearby houses.

This is the picture from the same chapter in the Great Illustrated Classics version.  Illustrator Ric Estrada also shows Sikes and the dog on the roof with the rope, but he chose the perspective of the crowd on the ground.

I almost didn’t include the next illustration.  In fact, I purposefully left the size small because I found it so disturbing.  It comes from the Bullseye Step Into Classics series.  For this children’s adaptation of Oliver Twist, Jean Zallinger was the illustrator.  Zallinger decided to focus on the moment after Sikes was haunted by “the eyes” and fell to his death.  If you can ignore the body (which I’m not sure is possible), I rather like the horror depicted on the faces of what used to be a blood-thirsty crowd and is now a traumatized group of people.  Unlike Dickens’ original story, Oliver witnesses Sikes’ death in this version.  Quickly skimming the text, I found that there were lots of changes made to condense the story.

I am sure Dickens had his reasons for destroying Sikes in this particular way.  Just as I’m sure each of the illustrators had their reasons for depicting the scene in their own ways. 

I am particularly disturbed by the last illustration: both for its content and for the children who were meant to view it.  This book is a beginner chapter book.  Amazon has this title listed for children in grade one and up. 

Up until now I have really enjoyed the children’s adaptation of books that I have found.  Remember this one?  and this one?  There was even this one.  

But as the topics of our classic novels get darker, I’m going to be more cautious when I scout out children’s copies.

Fellow readers with children, how do you feel about versions of classic works made for kids?

 

Fagin’s Concern?

In chapter XLIV of Oliver Twist, Nancy tries to leave Sikes’ house to meet with Rose Maylie on the bridge.  Sikes is in a mood–“more in the spirit of obstinacy than because he had any real objection” and forbids Nancy from leaving.  In fact he holds her down in a chair for an hour while she struggles.  It’s another sad example of Sikes abusive control over Nancy.  But my question is about Fagin.  After this incident (which Fagin witnesses) Fagin whispers to Nancy.

     “The reason of all this,” replied Fagin.  “If he”–he pointed with his skinny fore-finger up the stairs–“is so hard with you, (he’s a brute, Nance, a brute-beast) why don’t you—“
     “Well!” said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost touching her ear, and his eyes looking into hers.
     “No matter just now,” said the Jew, “We’ll talk of this again.  You have a friend in me, Nance; a staunch friend.  I have the means at hand, quiet and close.  If you want revenge on those that treat you like a dog–like a dog! worse than his dog, for he humours him sometimes–come to me.  I say, come to me.  He is the mere hound of a day, but you know me, of old, Nance.”

What’s going on with Fagin?  Is he truly concerned for Nancy?  He couldn’t be… could he? 

Fagin seems to walk a fine line where Sikes is concerned: pleasing him, hating him, using him, fearing him… 

Yes, Fagin and Nancy have known each other for a long time, but I can not see that as a reason for Nancy to trust Fagin.  Perhaps Fagin senses that something is “up” with Nancy, and he is worried that she knows too many of his secrets?

Fellow Oliver Readers, what’s going on here?

 

Oliver’s Chapter Headings

Did you know that Dickens was a fan of Cerventes?  It’s true.  Jeannette caught that he even used the word “quixotic” in Oliver Twist.  While most of the time, Dickens’ chapter headings are helpful,  I had flashbacks of Don Quixote when I read this one in Oliver.

Chapter XXXVI

Is a very short one, and may appear of no great importance in it’s place.  But it should be read notwithstanding, as a sequel to the last, and a key to one that will follow when it’s time arrives.

Thanks for the heads-up, Mr. Dickens.

 

 

 

Nancy

 

Nancy is probably one of my favorite characters in Oliver Twist.  I’m not sure exactly why yet – maybe it’s because she is so real, so conflicted, so tragic.   Chapter 40 begins with such sadness – Dickens says that Nancy’s life has been “squandered in the streets.”   How sad!  A life squandered!   In this chapter Nancy delivers a message she has overheard to Rose in order to help Oliver.   She does this despite the possibility of more abuse if she is “found out.”   As far as I can tell, she does this out of purely altruistic motives.   Rose begs her to accept help and promises to help Nancy escape her life of poverty and abuse, but Nancy refuses.   Rose asks how it is possible that for a man such as Sikes Nancy would “resign every future hope,” and calls it madness.   Here is Nancy’s response:

I don’t know what it is, answered the girl, I only know that it is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and wretched as myself.  I must go back.  Whether it is God’s wrath for the wrong I have done, I do not know, but I am drawn back to him through every suffering and ill usage; and I should be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand at last.

(SPOILER ALERT – Definite foreshadowing here.)

Is this what abused people feel like?   An utter helplessness and inability to escape their situation?   Has Nancy experienced so little love and acceptance in her short life that the position of “Sikes’ woman” is something she can not turn away from despite “suffering, ill usage,” and possible death?  Here’s another quote from Nancy’s lips at Rose’s continued appeal:

When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are give away their hearts, love will carry you all lengths – even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers, everything to fill them.   When such as I, who have no certain roof but the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank throughout all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us?  Pity us, lady – pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgement, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering.

Is it really that hopeless?   Is it even possible for Nancy to escape?  Do her life’s circumstances inevitably determine her future?  Even at London Bridge later in the book, with a final chance to choose “life,” she opts for “death.”  Either way, it certainly makes me want to act less judgemental and more loving toward those who have ended up in awful situations.  It’s hard to come away from Chapter 40 without some serious musings.

 

Dickens and I…

have both read Don Quixote!

In Chapter 41, Mr. Brownlow is puzzling out how to bring justice to the villians, and he drops the following line:

“…it seems to me that we shall be performing a very Quixotic act, in direct opposition to our own interest – or at least to Oliver’s, which is the same thing.”

Oh, I feel so smart!

 

 

A House-breaker’s Sixth Sense

     In the short time that he had had to collect his senses, the boy had firmly resolved that, whether he died in the attempt or not, he would make one effort to dart up stairs from the hall, and alarm the family.  Filled with this idea, he advanced at once, but stealthily.
     “Come back!”  suddenly cried Sikes aloud. “Back!  back!”
     Scared by the sudden breaking of the dead stillness of the place, and by a loud cry which followed it, Oliver let his lantern fall, and knew not whether to advance or fly.

Oliver Twist chapter XXII

Oliver is going to warn the family that they about to be robbed.  Out of nowhere Sikes shouts, “Come back!”?  In the margin of my copy I wrote in bold letters:  What warned Sikes? 

Did he see something that Dickens chose not to share with the reader?  Did Sikes “sense” that something was about to happen? 

Why did Sikes call?  He’s been threatening to shoot Oliver for two chapters.  My guess is that he feared the boy would implicate him and Toby Crackit in the attempted crime if caught.

What do you think?

 

“When I was a child…”

“…I thought like a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I put childish things behind me.”  1 Cor. 13:11

I think Mrs. Maylie knew this verse.   In Chapter 33, Oliver’s benefactors, the ones who have brought little-known peace, kindness and happiness into his life experience a very difficult time.  Rose Maylie – the other character with mysterious parentage – falls very ill.   Oliver is beside himself.   He would do anything to help Rose, who has been so good to him.   In his grief he pours out his heart to Mrs. Maylie:

Oh!  Consider how young and good she is, and what pleasure and comfort she gives to all about her.  I am sure – certain – quite certain – that, for your sake, who are so good yourself; she will not die.  Heaven will never let her die so young.

Mrs. Maylie kindly lays a hand on Oliver’s head, but her words indicate wisdom.   She tells him to hush, for “You think like a child, poor boy.”   Many in our world hold to this childish belief, I think.   How could a loving God “take” from our midst a young child, a beautiful and good young woman, a rich philanthropist, or a mother of young children?  This is an issue that causes many to lose their faith.   Listen to her words that follow – beautiful, wise words:

You teach me my duty…I had forgotten it for a moment, Oliver, but I hope I may be pardoned, for I am old and have seen enough of illness and death to know the agony of separation from the objects of our love.  I have seen enough, too, to know that it is not always the youngest and best who are spared to those that love them; but this should give us comfort in our sorrow; for Heaven is just; and such things teach us, impressively, that there is a brighter world than this; and that the passage to it is speedy.  God’s will be done!  I love her and He knows how well!

In our sinful, broken world, heartache and sorrow are never far.   Only in Heaven will there be true justice and true joy.   I think Dickens knew this too.