The Bowl
Please, sir, I want some more. That is the line everyone knows from Oliver Twist, and it happens in chapter two, before the story has even started. This is a full summary of the novel, so it spoils everything, the ending included.
Here is how I am telling it. Oliver is an orphan, and nearly every chapter is about who has him right now. The parish, a farm for babies, an undertaker, a gang of thieves, a rich old gentleman, a burglar, two kind ladies. So I ask one question all the way through. Who has Oliver now?
Which Edition
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number seven hundred and thirty. Its title page says Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy’s Progress, by Charles Dickens. It has fifty-three chapters, and by my count they hold about one hundred and fifty-eight thousand words. I give no first publication date, because I could not source one twice.
One note on names. The narrator often calls Fagin the Jew instead of using his name. I will say Fagin.
The Workhouse
Who has Oliver now? The parish. He is born in a workhouse, and his mother is a young woman who was found lying in the street the night before. She kisses him once and dies. Nobody knows her name or where she came from.
So the beadle, Mr. Bumble, invents a name for him. He names the orphans in alphabetical order. The last one was an S, so this one is a T, and he becomes Twist. The next, Mr. Bumble says, will be Unwin.
Oliver is sent to a branch workhouse, where an elderly woman is paid sevenpence halfpenny a head per week. Back in the main workhouse, the boys are starving on thin gruel. One of them has to ask, and it falls to Oliver. He walks up with his basin and says the line.
The board is horrified. A gentleman in a white waistcoat declares that the boy will be hanged. Oliver is locked in a dark room, and the board offers five pounds to anyone who will take him. A chimney sweep named Gamfield nearly does. The deal falls through, and the notice goes up again.
The Undertaker
Who has Oliver now? Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker. Oliver’s bed is under the counter, among the coffins. He walks at the head of children’s funerals in a hat band that hangs down to his knees.
The trouble is Noah Claypole, another charity boy, who bullies Oliver all day. Then Noah asks, “How’s your mother?” Oliver says she is dead, and that she died of a broken heart. When Noah keeps going, Oliver finally snaps and attacks him.
Noah screams that Oliver tried to murder him. Mr. Bumble arrives, and Oliver is beaten and shut up. Early next morning he slips away. At the gate he says goodbye to Dick, a sick little boy he has known since the workhouse. Dick blesses him. It is the first blessing Oliver has ever heard spoken over his head, and the book says he never forgets it.
A milestone tells him London is seventy miles away. That is where he goes.
London
Who has Oliver now? A boy called Jack Dawkins, who calls himself a friend, and takes him to an old man’s den. That is Fagin. There are sausages in a frying pan, and handkerchiefs hanging up to dry. Oliver is given hot gin and water and falls asleep on a sack.
Next morning, Fagin teaches him a game. He walks around with a handkerchief in his pocket, and Oliver has to lift it without being felt. Oliver thinks it is play. Fagin praises him, and gives him a shilling.
The boys have names. Jack Dawkins is the Artful Dodger, and the other boy is Charley Bates. Fagin sends them to bed with no supper when they come home empty handed. When Oliver finally goes out with them, the Dodger and Charley pick an old gentleman’s pocket at a bookstall. They run. Oliver, who has done nothing, runs too, and is caught.
Mr. Brownlow
At the police office, a magistrate called Mr. Fang is ready to convict him. The bookstall keeper steps in and says Oliver is not the thief. The old gentleman who was robbed is Mr. Brownlow, and he did not want to press the case. Oliver faints, and Mr. Brownlow takes him home.
Who has Oliver now? Mr. Brownlow and his housekeeper, Mrs. Bedwin. Oliver has a long fever. When he wakes, he stares at a portrait of a young woman on the wall. Mr. Brownlow reacts to the picture with an abrupt cry, and Oliver faints again. The picture is taken down, and nobody explains.
Then comes a bet. Mr. Brownlow sends Oliver to return some books and pay four pounds ten with a five pound note. Mr. Grimwig, a friend, says Oliver will never come back, and offers to eat his own head if he does. Oliver does not come back. Nancy, a girl from Fagin’s den, and Bill Sikes catch him in the street. The two old gentlemen sit in the dark with a watch on the table between them.
The Burglary
Who has Oliver now? Fagin again. He locks Oliver in, and lectures him on ingratitude, with a story about a boy who went to the police and was hanged. Then he hands Oliver over to Bill Sikes.
Sikes is a housebreaker, and he is frightening. He shows Oliver a pistol. At the door Oliver turns, hoping for a look from Nancy, but she sits perfectly still in front of the fire.
Sikes takes Oliver to a ruined house, where Toby Crackit is waiting, and then to a house in the country, near Chertsey. The plan needs a small boy to go in through a window. A shot goes off. Sikes drags him out, wounded, and the burglars run. When the chase gets close, they leave Oliver in a ditch.
The Maylies
Who has Oliver now? The house he was sent to rob. He drags himself to the nearest house, and the household takes him in. There is old Mrs. Maylie, her young niece Rose, the servants Giles and Brittles, and a doctor, Mr. Losberne, who looks after him.
Rose is especially kind to him. Oliver recovers, and for three months he is happy in a country cottage. Then Rose falls into a deadly fever. She lives. Mrs. Maylie’s son Harry arrives.
Then Oliver sees Fagin at the window, with a man who scowls at him. The household searches the fields and finds nothing. Meanwhile Harry asks Rose to marry him. She says no, because of what she calls a stain upon her name.
Meanwhile
The book keeps cutting back to the workhouse. Mr. Bumble courts the matron, Mrs. Corney, over tea. In the middle of this, an old woman called Sally is dying, and she says she has a secret about Oliver’s mother. She dies before she can tell it. Mrs. Corney is there, and the book will pick this up later.
Mr. Bumble marries Mrs. Corney and loses his cocked hat. Months later, a man called Monks shows up. The Bumbles meet him at night by the river, and sell him a small gold locket and a wedding ring. Monks and Fagin, we learn, have been working together to ruin Oliver.
Nancy
Nancy cannot stand it. She finds Rose in London and tells her about Monks. She will help Oliver, but she makes them promise that Monks will never learn how they know. She agrees to meet Rose and a grey haired gentleman on London Bridge at midnight.
Fagin has set Noah Claypole, who has come to London and joined the gang, to follow her. Noah hears every word. He tells Fagin, and Fagin tells Sikes. Sikes goes to her room and kills her.
The Last Chapters
Sikes runs. Mr. Brownlow, the gentleman from the bridge, has Monks seized and makes him talk. Sikes is hunted across London to Jacob’s Island, and dies there, hanging by his own rope. Fagin is caught, tried and sentenced to hang.
Monks tells the whole story. He is Oliver’s half brother. Rose turns out to be Oliver’s aunt. Mr. Brownlow adopts him. I save the details for the ending page.
My Take
Here is my reading, and it is a draft. Oliver is the least active hero I know. The book does things to him and around him, and he mostly cries. The real engines are Nancy, Sikes and Fagin, and the chapters with them are the book at its best.
If this helped, subscribe, and tell me in the comments who you think had Oliver best.
