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UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DA PARAÍBA CENTRO DE EDUCAÇÃO DEPARTAMENTO DE LETRAS E ARTES DISCIPLINA: LITERATURA INGLESA III PERÍODO: 2016.1 DOCENTE: JOSELITO LUCENA DISCENTE: SABRINA MEDEIROS DE FARIAS MARQUES

1. Point three ways Dickens criticized the way English society was organized. 2. Dickens got famous for his “heavy/desperate” irony. How do you see this in Oliver Twist? 3. The name of the character suggests “All of a Twist”. How can you point these “plot twists”?

1 – Charles Dickens was a writer and one of the most important social commentators who used his novels to criticize social problems in the way English society was organized. He criticizes the way England citizens were divided: the rich and privileged and the poor living in inhumane conditions of starvation, humiliation and etc. He also criticizes the covered enslavement of the poor people through the workhouses, talking about the Poor Law system (you would go to jail if you begged for food), the considerable number of orphans who became oppressed children in the workhouses, and how this law and the system were a huge social problem. 2- Dickens can be very heavy when using irony to expose the injustice and moral facts of the time. One example of that is in chapter IV, in which Dickens criticizes the horrible situation of poor English people in comparison to the intellectual people and philosophers, who were considered good and intelligent men by the society.

“I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gallwithin him, whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron, could have seenOliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog hadneglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity withwhich Oliver tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of

famine.There is only one thing I should like better – and that would be to seethe philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the samerelish.” Here Dickens criticizes the way these philosophers are seen by the society and the philosophers themselves. What value these men have if they do not care about the starving eight-year-old boys? Why is so easy to think about the most complicated theories of an ideal philosophic world and so difficult to think about the starvation and enslavement of the workhouses? Dickens is talking about the hypocrisy of the human kind, who admires the wrong qualities and encourages the wrong actions. He is calling the reader’s attention to the injustice of the world, which was just above the noses of the English citizens that were too busy reading the well-fed philosophers and being concerned about status issues. Dickens can be heavy when saying that this philosopher have a blood that is ice and a heart that is iron, but he is only showing the truth to the reader. 3- Dicken’s novel is full of twists and random events in almost every end of every chapter. The name “Oliver Twist” is probably representing the many twists and turns of the plot of Dicken’s novel. The character Oliver is always suffering with these many twists in his life. When he thinks he is okay and everything is resolved and fine, Dickens creates another event that changes the whole situation and turns off the short tranquility Oliver had. The scene when he steals something in London and get caught by the police, then a gentle man finds him and helps him in the court, but right way Oliver is caught again by the people who told him to steal. A lot of twists in a short period of time, which makes the reader feel anxious and pity for the poor Oliver.