Paper Summary:

This paper examines how in the novel "Oliver Twist", Oliver lives a predominantly sad life of loss and despair and how Dickens uses imagery and setting to create a tone of hopelessness.

From the Paper:

"Dickens uses imagery to support a tone of hopelessness. Dickens employs the phrase "despised by all, pitied by none" (28) to suggest the hardships that Oliver was born into, and the hardships that would carry on for a great portion of his life. His father died before Oliver was born, and his mother died while giving birth to him. He was born into the poverty of a horrifying orphanage where he would spend the first nine years of his life. He was lucky enough to survive the harsh conditions of the orphanage where the overseers would keep the money from the government and starve the children. Oliver had learned, in a non-respectable way, "that self-preservation is the first law of nature" (53). He became dependent on thievery as a way of survival. "

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