Many of us know of Oliver Twist, an orphan boy with a pure heart, raised in horrible surroundings. He lives a tough life in search of security and happiness. He is a true child hero.
Oliver Twist is the hero of Dickens’s Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse and is sold off as an apprentice to a cruel undertaker. With much difficulty, he escapes from the undertaker and flees to London where he meets the ‘Artful Dodger’ who invites him to stay at the house of a ‘gentleman’.
Oliver Twist later learns that his benefactor is a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal named Fagin. Here begin the adventures of Oliver Twist.
In a series of events, he is arrested, released, chased by Fagin and his gang, finds his half-brother and at last inherits a large fortune. Dickens wrote Oliver Twist to illustrate his belief that poverty leads to crime.
He was well-acquainted with the poverty of London and had sound understanding of the cruel treatment of orphans and London’s under-world. The novel was first published in a serialised form from 1837 to 1839.
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