Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist – a remarkable novel; it bristles with irony – like a porcupine. Its subject is the heart of injustice insofar as injustice is commonly conceived: poverty, class differences and income inequality. Its solution to this injustice? Is it that the wealthy should be nicer to the poor? Share more? Have pity on them?
I would prefer a book that recommended nobility in moderate poverty and laziness—assuming that book writing counts as a noble laziness.
On the surface, or, as a work with emotional appeal, pity is at the heart of Oliver Twist. The hero is a figure of exaggerated, pre-Lapsarian innocence; he is an unfortunate orphan, a victim of fate, a victim of society and so on and so forth. Who dares deny Oliver pity?
Perhaps, Charles Dickens himself? Given the relentless irony with which every page bristles, I think Charles viewed Oliver as a parody of himself—as an autobiographical joke.
Much irony is needed to make too much injustice palatable. Too much pity makes men insipid and life tasteless. Irony is the necessary antidote and invigorator.
Why not dispense with pity entirely and free mind and literature for unrestricted humor? Why feed the world the lie of good and evil characters candied over with feelings of pity and moral outrage? Why? Though Dickens was no simpleton, he did, however, depend on his writing for income. (Dickens the pick-pocket.)
To teach children to read Oliver Twist without teaching them to bristle with irony—does a great disservice to education. One cannot squeeze Oliver Twist into a handful of lessons. Oliver Twist, like all great art, can only be learned over years.
Thus spoke Dewey Dink.
