Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (smart books to read .TXT) 📕
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Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy’s Progress was Charles Dickens’ second novel, following The Pickwick Papers, and was published as a serial in the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany between 1837 and 1839. It details the misadventures of its eponymous character, Oliver Twist, born in a Victorian-era workhouse, his mother dying within minutes of his birth. He is raised in miserable conditions, half-starved, and then sent out as an apprentice to an undertaker. Running away from this situation, he walks to London and falls under the influence of a criminal gang run by an old man called Fagin, who wants to employ the child as a pickpocket.
The novel graphically depicts the wretched living conditions of much of the poor people of Victorian times and the disgusting slums in which they were forced to live. It has been accused of perpetrating anti-Semitic stereotypes in the character of Fagin, almost always referred to as “the Jew” in the book’s early chapters. Interestingly, while the serial was still running in the magazine, Dickens was eventually persuaded that he was wrong in this and removed many such usages in later episodes. He also introduced more kindly Jewish characters in such later novels as Our Mutual Friend.
Oliver Twist was immediately popular in serial form, with its often gripping story and lurid details. It has remained one of Dicken’s best-loved novels, and the story has often been made into films and television series, as well as into a very popular musical, Oliver!.
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- Author: Charles Dickens
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“What now?” inquired Sikes.
The Jew nodded his head towards Nancy, who was still gazing at the fire; and intimated, by a sign, that he would have her told to leave the room. Sikes shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if he thought the precaution unnecessary; but complied, nevertheless, by requesting Miss Nancy to fetch him a jug of beer.
“You don’t want any beer,” said Nancy, folding her arms, and retaining her seat very composedly.
“I tell you I do!” replied Sikes.
“Nonsense,” rejoined the girl coolly, “Go on, Fagin. I know what he’s going to say, Bill; he needn’t mind me.”
The Jew still hesitated. Sikes looked from one to the other in some surprise.
“Why, you don’t mind the old girl, do you, Fagin?” he asked at length. “You’ve known her long enough to trust her, or the Devil’s in it. She ain’t one to blab. Are you Nancy?”
“I should think not!” replied the young lady: drawing her chair up to the table, and putting her elbows upon it.
“No, no, my dear, I know you’re not,” said the Jew; “but—” and again the old man paused.
“But wot?” inquired Sikes.
“I didn’t know whether she mightn’t p’r’aps be out of sorts, you know, my dear, as she was the other night,” replied the Jew.
At this confession, Miss Nancy burst into a loud laugh; and, swallowing a glass of brandy, shook her head with an air of defiance, and burst into sundry exclamations of “Keep the game a-going!” “Never say die!” and the like. These seemed to have the effect of reassuring both gentlemen; for the Jew nodded his head with a satisfied air, and resumed his seat: as did Mr. Sikes likewise.
“Now, Fagin,” said Nancy with a laugh. “Tell Bill at once, about Oliver!”
“Ha! you’re a clever one, my dear: the sharpest girl I ever saw!” said the Jew, patting her on the neck. “It was about Oliver I was going to speak, sure enough. Ha! ha! ha!”
“What about him?” demanded Sikes.
“He’s the boy for you, my dear,” replied the Jew in a hoarse whisper; laying his finger on the side of his nose, and grinning frightfully.
“He!” exclaimed Sikes.
“Have him, Bill!” said Nancy. “I would, if I was in your place. He mayn’t be so much up, as any of the others; but that’s not what you want, if he’s only to open a door for you. Depend upon it he’s a safe one, Bill.”
“I know he is,” rejoined Fagin. “He’s been in good training these last few weeks, and it’s time he began to work for his bread. Besides, the others are all too big.”
“Well, he is just the size I want,” said Mr. Sikes, ruminating.
“And will do everything you want, Bill, my dear,” interposed the Jew; “he can’t help himself. That is, if you frighten him enough.”
“Frighten him!” echoed Sikes. “It’ll be no sham frightening, mind you. If there’s anything queer about him when we once get into the work; in for a penny, in for a pound. You won’t see him alive again, Fagin. Think of that, before you send him. Mark my words!” said the robber, poising a crowbar, which he had drawn from under the bedstead.
“I’ve thought of it all,” said the Jew with energy. “I’ve—I’ve had my eye upon him, my dears, close—close. Once let him feel that he is one of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief; and he’s ours! Ours for his life. Oho! It couldn’t have come about better! The old man crossed his arms upon his breast; and, drawing his head and shoulders into a heap, literally hugged himself for joy.”
“Ours!” said Sikes. “Yours, you mean.”
“Perhaps I do, my dear,” said the Jew, with a shrill chuckle. “Mine, if you like, Bill.”
“And wot,” said Sikes, scowling fiercely on his agreeable friend, “wot makes you take so much pains about one chalk-faced kid, when you know there are fifty boys snoozing about Common Garden every night, as you might pick and choose from?”
“Because they’re of no use to me, my dear,” replied the Jew, with some confusion, “not worth the taking. Their looks convict ’em when they get into trouble, and I lose ’em all. With this boy, properly managed, my dears, I could do what I couldn’t with twenty of them. Besides,” said the Jew, recovering his self-possession, “he has us now if he could only give us leg-bail again; and he must be in the same boat with us. Never mind how he came there; it’s quite enough for my power over him that he was in a robbery; that’s all I want. Now, how much better this is, than being obliged to put the poor leetle boy out of the way—which would be dangerous, and we should lose by it besides.”
“When is it to be done?” asked Nancy, stopping some turbulent exclamation on the part of Mr. Sikes, expressive of the disgust with which he received Fagin’s affectation of humanity.
“Ah, to be sure,” said the Jew; “when is it to be done, Bill?”
“I planned with Toby, the night arter tomorrow,” rejoined Sikes in a surly voice, “if he heerd nothing from me to the contrairy.”
“Good,” said the Jew; “there’s no moon.”
“No,” rejoined Sikes.
“It’s all arranged about bringing off the swag, is it?” asked the Jew.
Sikes nodded.
“And about—”
“Oh, ah, it’s all planned,” rejoined Sikes, interrupting him. “Never mind particulars. You’d better bring the boy here tomorrow night. I shall get off the stone an hour arter daybreak. Then you hold your tongue, and keep the melting-pot ready, and that’s all you’ll have to do.”
After some discussion, in which all three took an active part, it was decided that Nancy should repair to the Jew’s next evening when the night had set in, and bring Oliver away with her; Fagin craftily observing, that, if he evinced any disinclination to the task, he would be more willing to accompany the girl who had so recently
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