Oliver Twist

Introduction of Charlse dickens:-

      Charles John Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, was an English novelist and social critic. He created many most memorable fictional characters. He knew as the greatest novelist of the Victorian age or period. During his life, his works gave him name and fame. He was accepted as a novelist and writer by the critics and linguistics during those days. His novels and short stories become so popular.

 

          As a prolific 19th Century author of short stories, plays, novellas, novels, fiction and non-fiction, during his lifetime Dickens became known the world over for his remarkable characters, his mastery of prose in the telling of their lives, and his depictions of the social classes, mores and values of his times. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular. On 8 June 1870, on 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Droid. He never regained consciousness, and the next day, on 9 June, five years to the day after the Staplehurst rail crash, he died at Gad's Hill Place.

              

His creative works are:

The Pickwick papers

David Copperfield

Oliver Twist

A Tale of two cities

Great Expectations

     Among his novels, here we are concerned with Oliver Twist, which is entitled as The Parish Boy's Progress and it is the second novel by major English novelist of the Victorian age. Oliver Twist is remembered for Dickens's unromantic portrayal of criminals and their social lives. The story deals with an orphan, Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker.

Introduction of Novel: - Oliver Twist

     Oliver Twist is a novel which is written by famous English Author Charles Dickens. The novel is published by Richard Bentleyin in 1838. The story is about an Orphan child named Oliver Twist. He is protagonist. Oliver Twist endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes from workhouse. He travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Naïvely unaware of their unlawful activities, Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin.

   This novel is a social novel; the book has dark side of society and evils of society. It has negative parts of society like child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and is the basis for a highly successful musical play and the multiple Academy Award winning 1968 motion picture made from it.

Bird view on the novel:

       In this novel Oliver is an orphan child, who born in a workhouse in a small town near London in the early part of 19^th century. His mother died immediately after his birth. Nobody knows who she was. It was clear that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Oliver lived in a “Child Farm” and brought up here until he is 8 years old. At the age of eight the Parish official running the child farm decided that it is time to start working. So at the age of 8 years, an orphan child has to start working. Then Oliver also sends to work house. At the working house Oliver ask for more foods with famous quotation:

“Please sir, I want some more!”

         

         At the orphan house Oliver made some misbehave, Oliver commits the unpardonable offense of asking for more food when he is close to starving. So the parish officials offer five pounds to anyone who is willing to take Oliver on as an apprentice. Here authority got some persons who wanted to, adopt him and took Oliver to his home.  Dickens characterizes Oliver as "a close prisoner in the dark and solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and mercy of the board." The parish officials eventually send Oliver off with a coffin-maker.

        Here, At the coffin-maker’s shop, Oliver got good food, Good clothes and batter condition of living life. At the coffin-maker’s shop, Oliver is treated much better than he was at the workhouse or the child farm. The coffin-maker, Mr. Sowerberry, isn’t so bad, but his wife, Mrs. Sowerberry, and the other apprentice, Noah Claypole, have it in for Oliver from the start.  Noah told something bad about mother of Oliver, so he got angry and both of the fought. Oliver badly beat Noah. Oliver gets in trouble for knocking Noah down. After being abused some more, Oliver decides to set out for London on foot. Now Oliver ran away from that family and went to London. When he’s almost there, he runs into an odd-looking young man named Jack Dawkins. He Dodger buys him lunch and offers to introduce him to a "gentleman" in London who will give him a place to stay. Once in London, it quickly becomes clear to the reader that the Dodger and his friends are an unsavory bunch. Then Dodger introduces Oliver with Fagin. Fagin was a inhuman and cunning person.

            The old "gentleman," Fagin, trains kids to be pickpockets, and then he sells off what they steal. But Oliver doesn’t Realize what’s up until he’s actually out with the Dodger and another one of the boys, named Charley Bates. Oliver sees the pair steal the pocket handkerchief out of a nice-looking old man's pocket. When Oliver turns to run away, the nice-looking old man sees him run and yells, "stop, thief!" Oliver is tackled in the street, but by then the nice old man - his name is Mr. Brownlow has taken a better look at him.  He realized that Oliver looks too sweet and innocent to be a pickpocket. In fact, Oliver isn’t so much a pick-pocket as he is a very sick little boy. So Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver home and cares for him until he’s well. Unfortunately Fagin, the Dodger, Nancy (a prostitute), and Bill Sikes (another criminal) are worried that Oliver will rat them out to the police, so they keep a watch on Brownlow’s house.

            One day, when Brownlow entrusts Oliver with some money and an errand to run in the city, Fagin and the criminals nab the poor kid once again. Nancy feels guilty and steps in to defend Oliver when Fagin tries to smack him around. Fagin keeps Oliver shut up in a dreary old house for weeks, all the while still trying to turn him into a criminal. How long can a Nine-year-old hold out?  Not long afterwards, Bill Sikes and another thief say they need a small boy to help them break into a house outside of London; Fagin volunteers Oliver. The plan goes awry when the servants of the house wake up and catch Oliver in the act of sneaking in. The servants don’t realize that Oliver is there against his will, and was actually about to wake up the household to warn them about the robbers. So poor Oliver takes a bullet and is left behind when the rest are all running away. Fortunately, Oliver is picked up by the people who shot him, a family that turns out to be as nice as Mr. Brownlow.  They become Oliver’s caretakers. Meanwhile, Fagin is at his wits’ end wondering what happened to Oliver. He lets slip that a mysterious man named Monks offered to pay him hundreds of pounds to corrupt the young boy. Nancy pretends not to know what’s going on, but secretly resolves to help Oliver, and to figure out why Monks is so keen on having Oliver turn to crime.

             While Fagin and the criminals distress, Oliver learns to read and write with his new friends, the Maylies. He's also reunited with his first friend, Mr. Brownlow. Fagin and his gang are still trying to track Oliver down. Monks has managed to get hold of – and destroy – one of the few surviving tokens of Oliver’s parentage. Nancy finds out about it and gets in touch with Rose Maylie to warn her about Monks’s plot with Fagin.

            Unfortunately for Nancy, Bill Sikes (her lover) finds out about it and brutally murders her. Sikes tries to escape, but he’s haunted by what he’s done. Eventually, he's killed while trying to escape from the police: he falls off a rooftop while he’s trying to lower himself down, and inadvertently hangs himself.  Meanwhile, Mr. Brownlow has managed to find Monks. Mr. Brownlow was an old friend of Monks’ father and knows all about him. As it turns out, Monks is actually the older half-brother of Oliver, and was trying to corrupt Oliver so that he’d secure the entire family inheritance himself. Monks chooses to admit to everything rather than face the police.  Oliver ends up with what’s left of his inheritance, is legally adopted by Mr. Brownlow, and lives down the road from the Maylies. Everybody lives happily ever after.

 Except for Fagin, who is arrested and hanged, and Monks, who dies in prison.

Those are important characters of Novel. Oliver is protagonist and centre character of the novel.

Old Man and The Sea.

Old man and the sea:-

                   For 84 days, the old fisherman Santiago has caught   nothing. Alone, impoverished, and facing his own mortality, Santiago is now considered unlucky. So Manolin (Santiago's fishing partner until recently and the young man Santiago has taught since the age of five) has been constrained by his parents to fish in another, more productive boat. Every evening, though, when Santiago again returns empty-handed, Manolin helps carry home the old man's equipment, keeps him company, and brings him food.

                     On the morning of the 85th day, Santiago sets out before dawn on a three-day odyssey that takes him far out to sea. In search of an epic catch, he eventually does snag a marlin of epic proportions, enduring tremendous hardship to land the great fish. He straps the marlin along the length of his skiff and heads for home, hardly believing his own victory. Within an hour, a mako shark attacks the marlin, tearing away a great hunk of its flesh and mutilating Santiago's prize. Santiago fights the mako, enduring great suffering, and eventually kills it with his harpoon, which he loses in the struggle.

                    The great tear in the marlin's flesh releases the fish's blood and scent into the water, attracting packs of shovel-nosed sharks. With whatever equipment remains on board, Santiago repeatedly fights off the packs of these scavengers, enduring exhaustion and great physical pain, even tearing something in his chest. Eventually, the sharks pick the marlin clean. Defeated, Santiago reaches shore and beaches the skiff. Alone in the dark, he looks back at the marlin's skeleton in the reflection from a street light and then stumbles home to his shack, falling face down onto his cot in exhaustion. 

                  The next morning, Manolin finds Santiago in his hut and cries over the old man's injuries. Manolin fetches coffee and hears from the other fisherman what he had already seen — that the marlin's skeleton lashed to the skiff is eighteen feet long, the greatest fish the village has known. Manolin sits with Santiago until he awakes and then gives the old man some coffee. The old man tells Manolin that he was beaten. But Manolin reassures him that the great fish didn't beat him and that they will fish together again, that luck doesn't matter, and that the old man still has much to teach him.

                That afternoon, some tourists see the marlin's skeleton waiting to go out with the tide and ask a waiter what it is. Trying to explain what happened to the marlin, the waiter replies, "Eshark." But the tourists misunderstand and assume that's what the skeleton is.

           Back in his shack, with Manolin sitting beside him, Santiago sleeps again and dreams of the young lions he had seen along the coast of Africa when he was a young man.

To The Light House

introduction of Virginia Woolf:-

 

 

   

   
            Virginia Woolf was born on January 25, 1882, a descendant of one of Victorian England’s most prestigious literary families. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and was married to the daughter of the writer William Thackeray. 

            Woolf grew up among the most important and influential British intellectuals of her time, and received free rein to explore her father’s library. Her personal connections and abundant talent soon opened doors for her. Woolf wrote that she found herself in “a position where it was easier on the whole to be eminent than obscure.” Almost from the beginning, her life was a precarious balance of extraordinary success and mental instability.

         As a young woman, Woolf wrote for the prestigious Times Literary Supplement, and as an adult she quickly found herself at the center of England’s most important literary community. Known as the “Bloomsbury Group” after the section of London in which its members lived, this group of writers, artists, and philosophers emphasized nonconformity, aesthetic pleasure, and intellectual freedom, and included such luminaries as the painter Lytton Strachey, the novelist E. M. Forster, the composer Benjamin Britten, and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Working among such an inspirational group of peers and possessing an incredible talent in her own right, Woolf published her most famous novels by the mid-1920s, including The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and To the Lighthouse. With these works she reached the pinnacle of her profession.

               Woolf’s life was equally dominated by mental illness. Her parents died when she was young—her mother in 1895 and her father in 1904—and she was prone to intense, terrible headaches and emotional breakdowns. After her father’s death, she attempted suicide, throwing herself out a window. Though she married Leonard Woolf in 1912 and loved him deeply, she was not entirely satisfied romantically or sexually. For years she sustained an intimate relationship with the novelist Vita Sackville-West. Late in life, Woolf became terrified by the idea that another nervous breakdown was close at hand, one from which she would not recover. On March 28, 1941, she wrote her husband a note stating that she did not wish to spoil his life by going mad. She then drowned herself in the River Ouse.

             Woolf’s writing bears the mark of her literary pedigree as well as her struggle to find meaning in her own unsteady existence. Written in a poised, understated, and elegant style, her work examines the structures of human life, from the nature of relationships to the experience of time. Yet her writing also addresses issues relevant to her era and literary circle. Throughout her work she celebrates and analyzes the Bloomsbury values of aestheticism, feminism, and independence. Moreover, her stream-of-consciousness style was influenced by, and responded to, the work of the French thinker Henri Bergson and the novelists Marcel Proust and James Joyce.

       This style allows the subjective mental processes of Woolf’s characters to determine the objective content of her narrative. In To the Lighthouse (1927), one of her most experimental works, the passage of time, for example, is modulated by the consciousness of the characters rather than by the clock.

        The events of a single afternoon constitute over half the book, while the events of the following ten years are compressed into a few dozen pages. Many readers of To the Lighthouse, especially those who are not versed in the traditions of modernist fiction, find the novel strange and difficult. Its language is dense and the structure amorphous. Compared with the plot-driven Victorian novels that came before it, To the Lighthouse seems to have little in the way of action. Indeed, almost all of the events take place in the characters’ minds.

            Although To the Lighthouse is a radical departure from the nineteenth-century novel, it is, like its more traditional counterparts, intimately interested in developing characters and advancing both plot and themes. Woolf’s experimentation has much to do with the time in which she lived: the turn of the century was marked by bold scientific developments. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution undermined an unquestioned faith in God that was, until that point, nearly universal, while the rise of psychoanalysis, a movement led by Sigmund Freud, introduced the idea of an unconscious mind.

            Such innovation in ways of scientific thinking had great influence on the styles and concerns of contemporary artists and writers like those in the Bloomsbury Group. To the Lighthouse exemplifies Woolf’s style and many of her concerns as a novelist. With its characters based on her own parents and siblings, it is certainly her most autobiographical fictional statement, and in the characters of Mr. Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay, and Lily Briscoe, Woolf offers some of her most penetrating explorations of the workings of the human consciousness as it perceives and analyzes, feels and interacts.

Waiting for Godot

Introduction of Smuel Beckett:-

             Samuel Beckett was born in Ireland on April 13; 1906.He was very peculiar fellow, who did not believe in regular conventions and traditions. From the very young age, he was suffering from depression. He didn’t like long conversations (that we can see by the short dialogues in his plays). He, in very young age, could see the life from very near. And so, he felt more of pain and inner sorrows. It is his well known comment that:

“I had little talent for happiness.”

            Beckett was novelist, playwright, poet, theater director and essayist. His some of famous works are “Murphy”, “Molloy”, “The Unnamable”, “Endgame”, “How it is”, “Waiting for Godot” etc. He won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. His pen name was Andrew Belis. He died on December 22; 1989, at the age of 83, in Paris, France.

          Waiting in the play induces boredom as a theme. Ironically Beckett attempt to create a similar nuance of boredom within the audience by the mundane repetition of dialogue and actions Vladimir and Estragon constantly ponder and ask questions , many of which are rhetorical or are left unanswered. During the course of the play certain unanswered questions arise:

Who is Godot?

Where are Gogo and Didi?

Who beats Gogo?

All of these unanswered questions represent the rhetorical questions that individuals ask but never get answer for within their lifetime .

Vis a vis is there a God?

Where do we come from?

Who is responsible for our suffering?

The German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger expressed clearly that human beings can never hope to understand why they are here. The tramps repetitive inspection of their empty hats perhaps symbolizes mankind’s vain search for answers within the vacuum of a universe

.

                  Jean Paul Sartre, the leading figure of French existentialism declared that human beings require a rational basis for their lives but are unable to achieve one and thus human life is a futile passion. Estragon and Vladimir attempt to put order into their lives by Waiting for a Godot who never arrives. They continually subside into the futility of their situation reiterating the phrase” Nothing to be done.” Vladimir also resolves with the notion that life is futile or nothing is to be done at the beginning replaying.

“ All my life I’ve tried to put it from me… And I resumed the struggle.”

              Estragon’s questions is left unanswered by Vladimir. Note that these questions seem to bring pain or anxiety to Estragon. Beckett conveys a universal message that pondering the impossible questions that arise from waiting cause pain, anxiety, inactivity and destroy people from within. Note that both Vladimir and Estragon ponder suicide, by hanging themselves from the tree, but are unable to act through to anxiety, as Estragon states,

“ Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer.”

“ Estragon: Well, shall we go?

Vladimir: Yes, let’s go.

They do not move.”

                    Beckett infers that humans ‘pass time’ by habit or routine to cope with the existentialist dilemma of the dread or anxiety of their existence Beckett believes that humans basically alleviate the pain of living or existence substantiates Sartre’s view that humans require a rational base for their lives. Beckett feels that habit protects us from whatever can neither be predicted or controlled, as he wrote about the theme of habit in his published essay concerning Proust:

   “ Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightening-conductor of his existence. Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit. Breathing is habit. Life is habit.”

      Estragon and Vladimir constantly ‘pass the time’ throughout the entire play to escape the pain of waiting and to possibly to stop themselves from thinking or contemplating too deeply. Vladimir expresses this idea at the end of the play,

      ‘ Habit is a great deadener’, suggesting that habit is like an analgesic numbing the individual.  The play is mostly ritual  with Estragon and Vladimir filling the emptiness and silence. “ It’ll pass the time,” explain Vladimir, offering to tell the story of the crucifixion passing the time is their mutual obsession, as exhibited after the first departure of Pozzo and Lucky:

“ Vladimir: That passed the time.

Estragon: It would have passed in any case.

Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.”

         Estragon also joins in the game “ That’s the idea, let’s make a little conversation.” The rituals by which Estragon and Vladimir combat silence and emptiness are elaborate, original an d display Beckett’s skill as a writer. In the play Beckett echoes pattern of question, answer and repetition which is his alternative to all the flaccid chat and triviality of the conventionally ‘well structured play’. Gogo and Didi frequently repeat phrases, such as, “ Nothing to be done”. Their actions consist of ritually inspecting their hats. Nothingness is what the two tramps are essentially fighting against and reason why they talk. Beckett suggests that activity and inactivity oppose one another thought arising from inactivity and activity terminating thought. In the second Act they admit that habit suppresses their thoughts and keeps their minimal sanity:

         “ Estragon:……..we are incapable of keeping silent.

Vladimir: You’re right we’re inexhaustible.

Estragon: It’s so we won’t think.”

                  As we know that Estragon and Vladimir symbolize the human condition as a period of waiting. Most of society spend their lives searching for goals, such as exam or jobs, in the hope of attaining a higher level or advancing. Beckett suggest that no one advances through the inexorable passage of time Vladimir states this,

     “ One is what one is ………….The essential doesn’t change.”

          This may be a mockery of an human endeavour, as it implies that mankind achieves nothing and is ironically contradictory to Beckett’s own endeavour . The tragicomedy of the play illustrates this, as two men are waiting for a man of whom they no little about. The anticlimaxes within the play represent the disappointment of life’s expectations. For example POZZO AND LUCKY’s first arrival is mistaken for the arrival of Godot. These points reinforce Kierkagaard’s theory that all life will finish as it began in nothingness and reduce achievement to nothing.

                   A process of dying seems to take place within all four characters, mentally and physically. Estragon and Vladimir may be pictured as having a great future behind them Estragon may have been a poet, but he is now content to quote and adapt, saying,

“ Hope deferred maketh the something sick.”

             The something being the heart from a quote from the Bible . Vladimir may have been a thinker, but finds he is uncertain of his reasoning, as when questioned by Estragon about their whereabouts the day before replies angrily

,

“ Nothing is certain when you’re about.”

Time also erodes Estragon’s memory, as shown here:

“ Vladimir : what was it you wanted to know?

Estragon: I’ve forgotten. That’s what annoys me.”

Time causes their energies and appetites to ebb. The fantasized prospect of an erection a by product of hanging makes Estragon ‘ highly excited ’. The dread of nightmares plague Estragon during the day ailments and fears become more agonizing. It is an example of Beckett using ‘ordinary’ images to depict mankind’s decay. Time destroys Pozzo’s sight and strips the previous master of almost everything. Beckett’s bitterness towards  time is illustrated by Pozzo’s bleak speech:

          “ (suddenly furious) Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time!... One day I went blind….one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?. (calmer) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”

When the structure of action is closing in through the course the play, with the past barely recognizable and the future unknown , the here and now of action, the present acting on stages becomes all important. Existentialist theories propose that the choices of the present are important and that time causes perceptional confusion. Note how shadowy the past becomes to Estragon, as he asks questions such as, “what did we do yesterday?” Moreover, all the characters caught in the deteriorating cycle of events do not aspire to the future.

Estragon portrays the horror of their uneventful repetitive existence:

     “ Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!”

          The fact that Estragon and Vladimir never seem to reach an event or end is the reason for them wanting to control the end themselves, as Estragon says, “ Like to finish it?” The ‘leaf motif’ is an existentialist theory inferring that life repeats itself with a slight change. Estragon highlights the ‘leaf motif’ theory, saying that a similar person with smaller feet will fill his boots:

“ Another will come, just as …as….as me, but with smaller feet.”

The endless eternal return theory is vividly portrayed at the beginning of the second act

:

“ Then all the dogs come running

And dug the dog a tomb

He stops, broods, resumes:

Then all the dogs come running

And dug the dog a tomb.”

                       The play is deliberately unnatural and abstract because it is intended to have universal meaning. The world of Estragon and Vladimir is fragmented of time and place and is submerged with vague recollections of culture and the past. For example Estragon remembers the Bible with uncertainty:

“ I remember the maps with of the Holy Land. Coloured they were.”

                        Estragon and Vladimir talk to each other and share ideas, but it is clear that both characters are self-absorbed and incapable of truly comprehending each other. Estragon and Vladimir regularly interrupt one another with their own thoughts showing their individual self-absorption. Estragon admits,

“ I can’t have been listening.”

And Vladimir says,

“ I don’t understand.”

      Displaying the failures of language as a means of communication

.

                           Beckett portrays the human condition as a period of suffering. Heidegger theorized that humans are thrown into the world and that suffering is part of existence.

                            Estragon injects bathos into the serious debates about the thief who was saved by Christ by declaring with bluntness a reductive statement. “ People are bloody ignorant apes.” Estragon and Vladimir often behave comically, finding interest in the banal reducing human experience to the mundane. The tramps comic, banal behavior is very similar to the behavior of another pair of comic characters Laurel and Hardy

:

“ Vladimir: Pull on your trousers.

Estragon: What?

Vladimir: Pull on your trousers.

Estragon: You want me to pull off my trousers?

Vladimir: Pull ON your trousers.

Estragon: (realizing his trousers are down) True. (He pulls up his trousers).”

                   At the end we summarize Waiting For Godot as a display of Beckett’s bleak view of life would be a simplistic presumption, as Estragon and Vladimir epitomize all of mankind, showing the full range of human emotions. Estragon and Vladimir do suffer but equally show glimpses of happiness and excitement. They are excited by Pozzo’s arrival and Estragon is “ highly excited” about the prospect of an erection. Equally, as acts of random violence and anger are committed signs of affection are displayed between the characters. Gogo and Didi are the affectionate names Estragon and Vladimir call each other. Didi apologizes for his behavior and displays affection.