With Oliver Twist, Dickens wanted to show clearly the nature of good and evil and the 'principle of good surviving through every adverse circumstance, and triumphing at last'. Rife with Dickens's disturbing descriptions of street life, the novel is buoyed by the purity of the orphan Oliver. Though he is treated with cruelty and surrounded by coarseness for most of his life, his pious innocence leads him at last to salvation -- and the shocking discovery of his true identity.
From the community