Dodging Dickens, Pushing Pratchett

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Oliver Twist is one of my favorite stories of all time.  I feel so lucky to have been given the opportunity to read such a highly acclaimed classic for my AP Literature class that I have put off for far too long.  To have an obsession with everything Oliver Twist and not to have read the original book felt blasphemous, so a decent amount of weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.  One of my favorite aspects of the story of Oliver Twist is my favorite character, Jack Dawkins (better known as "The Artful Dodger").  He's charming, he's clever, he cares for his really close friends and those who take care of him, and he is a boy with the mind and clothing of a man.  This is going to sound so incredibly stupid, but I'm pretty sure Dodger was the inventor of what we call "swag" today; he knew that it was all in the attitude.  One of the many reasons I immediately chose to read Oliver Twist for this summer assignment was because it's newer counterpart is a young adult fiction (my favorite genre ever ever ever) is focused entirely around The Artful Dodger.  I knew this almost instantly, considering the title of this recently-published book is titled Dodger.  Dodger was written by Sir Terry Pratchett, who was knighted in England for his "services to literature;" if that's not fancy, I don't know what is.  Even though the time gap between the original and the "remake" in this instance is much larger than almost every other paired option on the list of books to choose from for this assignment (aside from the Book of Genesis and East of Eden), I am very confident in my ability to study YAF and old English language and I was excited to challenge myself to connect such different styles of writing.  

The questions that I am encouraged to consider in the syllabus for this blog post are really fantastic questions that will get my interpretations across well, so I am going to position them below in an almost interview format.

"How does the retelling establish its own story line or stray from the original?"

It is clear to anyone who knows the story of Oliver Twist that Dodger takes root in the original Oliver Twist.  While some stories that are intentionally based off of past works (especially in the case of Shakespeare) whose roots can be somewhat concealed by significant shifts in setting or genders, Terry Pratchett is actually using the popularity and merit of Dickens' Oliver Twist to give his book greater historical context and perhaps garner more interest in a quasi-sequel to Oliver's original story.  The greatest difference is that this retelling focuses on The Artful Dodger almost exclusively, who was more of a supporting role in the original Oliver Twist.

"How does the retelling change your perception of the original?"

One of the coolest things about Dodger is that Charles Dickens (the author of Oliver Twist) is a character in Dodger.  His presence in this newer book made me imagine Dickens as a person more than I had when I was reading Oliver Twist.  When I read Dickens' history of him being thrown into the harsh conditions of the industrial movement and his family being sent to debtor's prison when Charles was only twelve years old, I imagined him growing up to be very bitter, perhaps drawing the energy to write a book like Oliver Twist from his spitefulness and strong opinions on social issues.  I don't know if anyone is sure what Dickens was really like, personality-wise, but Pratchett makes him out to be a very caring, very clever man that uses his success to help anyone he can.  I like this more cheerful and philanthropic image of Dickens better than an angry man grumbling away at a typewriter, which in turn influenced my sense of the overall attitude of Oliver Twist.

"Does the retelling have literary merit or is it purely entertainment?"

Considering the fact that Pratchett was knighted for his literary contributions to the world, I would say his works have already garnered a great deal of merit.  Even if it was written for young adults, I can see it inspiring younger people to explore 19th century literature (especially from England) by showing how lively that era actually was.  I don't see Dodger going down in history as a classic by any means, but it was well written for the most part and has a lot of potential to casual push the envelope for young readers and older readers who are experienced in classic literature.

"Which book did you appreciate more?"

It is so, so hard to retell a story as openly as Pratchett does and not give loads of credit to the original.  I am over the moon about the fact that there is an entire book dedicated to the brilliant boy known around London as "The Artful Dodger," and that Pratchett seems to know how to make a teenager feel like they're an important part of a big inside joke, but you can't beat Dickens.  Let's be real here, folks.  No matter how much you might love Dodger, you have to remind yourself that there would be no Dodger without Oliver Twist.  Of course, there would be no Oliver Twist without the influence of past events and stories, following Foster's idea that there is only one story.  But I think there's something to be said for books that are written from an intense passion for a topic that the rest of the world has been hesitant to touch, which Dickens executed so brilliantly.  While they may be more convoluted and outdated, Dickens' works are just a joy to read and I owe him so much for creating a story that I have latched onto since a young age and loved ceaselessly ever since.  You just can't beat him.

I am incredibly satisfied by my summer mission to tackle the old and the new versions of Dickens' great tale of Oliver Twist, and I really hope that I will have something valuable to contribute to class discussions surrounding the topic of classics versus retellings.  I look forward to comparing these wonderful stories I've read with the various books read by everyone else in the class.  It's sure to be a fun and enlightening year, so GET PUMMPPPEDDD.

Kick the Kid and the Canine

I know one thing, and it's that Dickens was not shy about incorporating violence into his stories.  To be honest I'd be a little less shocked at all of the bludgeoning going on in Oliver Twist if the story hadn't been originally published in a newspaper that was commonly read aloud by families at the breakfast table.  Way to keep it PG, mister Dickens.

Anyway, beatings are a significant part of Oliver's story.  We see right from the beginning that Oliver is being beaten by virtually every adult of whom he is put into the care, whether it be the woman who has raised him until his tenth birthday or the mighty Beadle himself.  Even the young teenage assistant to Mr. Sowerberry (the undertaker of Oliver's hometown), Noah Claypole, takes the liberty of taunting Oliver about his dead mother and beating him to bits when Oliver retaliates.  We think we've seen the worst of the violence finished once Oliver runs away from the undertaker, but we are solemnly mistaken.  Bill Sikes seems to bring new meaning to violence.  I imagine the mere look on his face and the tone of his voice to feel incredibly threatening, and threatening he is.  The greatest amount of violence we see Sikes inflict is on his poor dog, Bullseye, whose hide is frequented with blows from a stick or a fist.  The dog is described to have gashes on his snout when he first enters the story, and Sikes is not shy about kicking him about.  While the dog is very poorly treated, it is clear that Bullseye is incredibly protective and loyal to his master, no matter the abuse.  He never runs away from Sikes, lies down in the corner at all times and responds to Sikes' orders to attack others when necessary.  An interesting parallel that I drew whilst considering the topic of violence is the one between Bullseye the dog and Nancy.  Nancy alludes to the fact that she worked as a thief for Fagin when she was Oliver's age and still sticks around the group.  It seems that Nancy and Bill Sikes are in a romantic relationship.  Like Bullseye, we see that Nancy is incredibly loyal to Sikes and usually quiet, though she is quite sassy when she speaks out.  While Sikes is usually only verbally abusive to Nancy when he is taking his anger out on her, he eventually ends up beating her to death.  

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster says that one of the two types of violence in literature is the type that is used to drive plot progression.  I would argue that in the case of Oliver Twist, the majority of the violence is used simply to build up the pain of Oliver's story (because it happens so darn frequently), and the small portion that is actually a major event in the story is used as plot conclusion rather than progression.  But, you know, Dickens does things differently.   

In the other type of violence mentioned in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster mentions starvation as a form of violence.  This seemed strange to me until I realized that it is being inflicted by someone or something and it is causing physical harm to someone.  The perpetrator of starvation may be different depending on the scenario; for example, a person finding themselves stranded on a desert island is receiving that violence from nature.  Someone with anorexia is receiving abuse from themself or, rather, their own mind.  In Oliver Twist, that violence is being inflicted by the upper and middle class of England, or so Dickens wants to make the reader think.  The pressure being shoveled on the poor people to become self-dependent and less of an overall bother forces every man, woman and child in 19th century workhouses to labor and starve to their eventual death.  The negative stigma against the poor that was held by anyone who could keep themself out of a workhouse made these conditions worse and worse.  Seeing the pain and deaths that these places caused the lower class make it difficult to deny that starvation is a form of violence.

The various ways that violence is presented in Oliver Twist taught me a lot about symbolism through abuse and somewhat hidden forms of violence that bring deeper meaning to the story as a whole.

London - 70 Miles

Oliver Twist has spent his entire live enslaved in poverty, but his liberation from the upper class is found in his movement from one place to another.  The fact that location is so important in Oliver's journey connects the story to Foster's chapter on the importance of geography in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor.  

While Dickens never tells us the name of the place where Oliver's story begins, we can take from context that it is a smaller town out in the country.  At one point, the Beadle is conversing with the town undertaker about someone who has died and it comes as a surprise to the undertaker that he has not heard of this person before.  This tells us about the size of Oliver's hometown.  Knowing that workhouses like the one Oliver lives in are usually quite large, we can assume that they are in the countryside due to the lack of space large cities would need to accommodate so many poor folks.   

Oliver decides to run away when he remembers hearing of big cities, where opportunity to make oneself a life lies on every street corner.  Though he doesn't know where exactly he's headed, he decides that any place is better than the one he's been shut up in for ten long years.  Oliver is the type of boy who believes that when you've spent your whole life standing still, the only direction you can go is up.  This attitude gives us a sense of the success he will find himself having throughout the rest of the story.  

The atmosphere around Oliver changes dramatically between the small town at the beginning to the great city of London.  In the workhouse, Oliver was chastised constantly for merely existing, it seems.  In the very different setting of London, Oliver was constantly surrounded by people, would be a part of a band of thieves, and yet no one would pay any attention to him.  You can imagine how liberating it must have been for Oliver to suddenly be a part of a kind of family (no matter the fact that they are all criminals) and be able to walk the streets without being stopped for questioning.  That's a lot of change for a small orphan who has been beaten by everyone he's ever known.

The path to London is also significant to Oliver's journey.  He travels through the country side by foot, sleeping in haystacks and begging for food at every house he passes.  The fact that he must walk around 100 miles alone is representative of Oliver's tendency to risk his life with the small chance that he'll find a better life elsewhere.  He does the same thing later as he tries to escape Fagin's den of thieves to find shelter under Mr. Brownlow's roof.  The only way he survives the walk to London is with a little help from a friendly stranger or two, which is also how he survives during his time in London.

While it might seem that these points are significant because of people rather than geography, it's important to remember what Foster says on this topic in How to Read Literature Like a Professor: "Literary geography is typically about humans inhabiting spaces, and at the same time the spaces that inhabit humans" (166).  As the geography surrounding Oliver changes drastically, so do the people and their treatment of Oliver.  These varying places and people all play a role in directing Oliver on his quest for a sense of belonging.

Twist and the Poor Laws

Can I start off by saying that the title of this blog post would make a sweet name for a band? Like Fitz and the Tantrums but more 19th century England.

It's no secret that Dickens' works were influenced or even driven by his opinions on politics, but I had not thought about this fact in great depth until I read the chapter on political literature in How to Read Literature Like a Professor.  The politics that take place in a courtroom or a parliament building are closely tied to the more abstract politics of social issues, which are in an abundance in Dickens' writing, to say the least.  A peek into Dickens' childhood explains the premise of Oliver Twist and common themes throughout his books.  He grew up in a middle class family that suddenly found themselves in deep debt.  Every member of Charles' family was sent to debtor's prison except for Charles himself, which left a twelve year old Charles to the task of paying his family's way out of prison.  He worked in a blacking factory where shoeshine was made and became a (figurative) slave to the industrial movement.  While working in the factory, Charles found himself working more efficiently in the factory after an older boy gave him some tips.  The older boy's name was Bob Fagin, which explains the use of the name "Fagin" in Oliver Twist.  (If you don't know the story of Oliver Twist, Fagin is an old man who leads a band of very young thieves and keeps many treasures hidden for himself in their den.)  Both Fagins perhaps had a heavy hand in helping their followers become skilled in their jobs, one making shoeshine and the other stealing handkerchiefs.  

Charles' family was eventually bailed out of debtor's prison when his father inherited some money and Charles returned to school.  Even though the Dickens family was no longer incredibly poor, Charles had the ability to empathize with the lower class that he had been thrust into as a young boy, practically orphaned and enslaved by factory walls.  The stigma against the lower class was supposed to be lifted by the creation of the Poor Laws in 1834, which mandated that all public charity had to flow through workhouses.  This created massive problems for anyone who was unable to perform intense physical labor (as a result of young/old age, illness, deformity, etc.) and forced many poor people to work straight to their graves.  The people running the workhouses separated husbands from wives (to make sure no more poor people were being produced) and mothers from children (to keep the children from having ideas put into their heads).  The food was gross and thin so that the workhouse people would be encouraged to find jobs elsewhere and become independent, while they really were just starving and working to death.

Oliver Twist is a story that brings these conditions to light in the public eye.  Once Dickens gained enough popularity and access to public ink, he had the ability to tear down the stigma against the lower class that so many middle class people had.  The way he describes the upper class men that make up the board of the workhouse is almost satirical; they are practically worshiped by those whom they preside over and are all rather fat.  Any reader without a sense of humor would think that Dickens is praising the upper class, while he's actually praising the lower class for enduring such tribulations as those put upon them by class barriers.  

Dickens uses Oliver as a symbol for all poor people in 19th century England.  His life in the confines of the workhouse reaches out into to the filthy streets of London where the poor will do, eat and say anything to survive without giving their lives to the government.  By showing middle and upper class readers (his primary audience) the dreadful conditions the lower class is forced to live in due to the government's handling of poverty, Dickens evokes a certain amount of empathy with Oliver Twist, especially by focusing on a boy that is doing anything he can to keep himself out of the grips of crime and death.  We know now that Dickens' writing had a profound impact on his readers that led him to the position of fame he is in today, which probably means he had a hand in changing people's minds about the "immoral" lives the poor lived at the time.  The government is influenced by the people.  The people are influenced by the things they read.  That sounds pretty political to me.

Biblical Bumble

Can I just say that I am so pumped to be reading Oliver Twist for AP Lit. this summer.  If you read my blog post on my favorite books, you'll know that a substantial portion of my heart belongs to the story of Peter Pan.  You should also know that Oliver Twist is a close second to Peter Pan, and has been since I was 10 or 11 years old.  After I saw the 2005 live action version of the movie directed by Roman Polanski, I fell in love with the whole premise of the story and many of the characters.  Much of my obsession is probably owed to the fact that I have a big fat crush on the Artful Dodger (Oliver's companion and savior), but we'll save that for a different time.  For now, let's talk about biblical ties in Oliver Twist, the book by Charles Dickens.

In early 19th century England, where people were starving in the streets and chimney sweeps bought new children from aristocrats whenever their old child apprentices suffocated to death in tight chimneys, it's no surprise that almost everyone with a pocket to store a book in had a bible to turn to for guidance.  The work house that Oliver is born in prays together at every meal, without fail.  In the 2005 movie version of Oliver Twist, the dining hall where all of the gruel is consumed by emaciated children has "GOD IS HOLY - GOD IS TRUTH" painted on the back wall.  The 2008 adaptation has "GOD SEEST THOU" in the same place, for everyone to see.  Even in the book, which lacks these specific visual details, it is clear that religious practice is being drilled into the poor.  Perhaps this is the rich overseers' way of making the poor dependent and submissive, leading them to believe that they owe God every ounce of physical labor they can give, which goes directly to the benefit of the rich men running the work house.  

Now if we step away from specific references to Christianity, we can see the biblical influence that Foster points out in How to Read Literature Like a Professor.  The Bible is so old that it has served as a base for many stories since then.  Even those that aren't replicas of the original stories often contain allusions to the Bible or ideas that readers might associate with a classic biblical story.  I drew a few connections between Oliver Twist and the Bible that are mostly conceptual and most likely accidental on Dickens' part.  The concept of the loss of innocence is linked to the famous story of Adam and Eve in Genesis and can be found in Oliver's story.  Oliver is only 10 years old when the majority of the book takes place, and he has not been well-traveled or well-educated in those ten years.  Therefore, Oliver is clearly quite naive and unaware of the full extent of the evils constantly going on around him.  He spends a lot of his time living with Fagin and his band of thieving adolescents before he even realizes what they do for a living.  He finds their ability to snatch things from each others' pockets rather funny until he witnesses them pick-pocketing strangers in the same fashion.  There's a scene where Oliver falls to his knees in private and prays that God will let him die before he becomes a thief like the boys who took him in.  It's an incredibly sad scene, as you see him clinging onto his innocence for dear life, as if he were resisting the deadly fruit from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.  See the correlation.  Oliver is a bit like Adam, tempted by the fruit being handed to him by the young boys around him, who resemble Eve's character.  Fagin is perhaps the serpent, handicapped by his age but manipulative nevertheless.  The fruit is a life of crime and boy, does it taste sweet to a band of starving vagrant boys being lured off the street by an old caregiver.

The story of Cain and Abel also came to mind as I was recalling bible stories that have stuck with me since bible school.  My mother read East of Eden to me when I was younger, in which Steinbeck tells the story of the two brothers.  I'm not positive on this, but I think Steinbeck says in his version that the brothers are twins, and that Abel exits their mother's womb with Cain holding onto his ankle, or the other way around.  I didn't see this in Genesis but Steinbeck's adaptation of the story is incredibly well known.  Either way, the story is one of great jealousy.  Abel was the first human to die, according to Genesis, and Cain was the first to commit murder.  Nice job, humanity.  Couldn't have 4 humans in existence without one of them killing another.  Typical.  ANYWAY, we can see this envy in the band of thieves Oliver lives with. When Oliver is kidnapped from his route to the book store and taken back to Sykes' home, he is stripped of his belongings.  The fighting that goes on between Bill Sykes and Fagin over a five pound note has one man at the other's throat.  The younger boys circle Oliver like a cackle of hyenas and stuff their fists into his suit pockets.  As they see Oliver taken under the wing of Mr. Brownlow and enter a privileged home, they hold onto his ankle and refuse to let go without receiving a portion of the wealth.  While the concept of bitter jealousy might not root from one story, the story of Cain and Abel is the perfect example of a well-known relationship that can enhance the meaning behind an envious relationship in newer texts.

Geometric Poetry

When it comes to writing poetry, I cannot produce anything of quality without a strict structure to follow.  That is why I love writing sonnets so much; they always come out sounding better than you imagined them to.  They take a lot of work but somehow manage to make you feel like it did all of the really tough parts for you.  

There are so many beautiful components that have given sonnets their place in the literary world, which is why I was quite upset by Foster's chapter on sonnets in How to Read Literature Like a Professor.  Foster spends a far too significant amount of the chapter making the fact that a sonnet is shaped like a square sound like it's deserving of suspense and aw.  But, really though, who cares what a poem is shaped like if it doesn't fall into the category of concrete poetry?  Sure, it doesn't hurt to mention the similar width and height of a sonnet, but concrete poetry depends on the shape of the poem itself to amplify meaning and even give the poem its entire purpose.  The square shape of sonnets is partially given by the use of iambic pentameter, which is a very important part of reading and analyzing poetry, yet Foster deems this topic rather irrelevant (???) and trips right over it and into the topic of line groups (which I will admit is much more interesting and relevant than the overall shape of the sonnet).

Congratulations, you can recognize a sonnet by its shape.  Now how are you going to read it in a way that would make the author feel like you've understood the passion he or she has put into writing it? Let's focus on that a bit more.

To be honest, I haven't read many non-Shakespearean sonnets before now.  I went on a hunt for some new ones and found a plethora of sonnets from around the world.  I particularly liked one from the Russian philologist and writer Vyacheslav Ivanov, who writes poetry for fun in his spare time.  His sonnet titled "The Holy Rose" caught my attention with its imagery and slightly strange words.  Here is "The Holy Rose":

THE HOLY Rose her leaves will soon unfold.
The tender bud of dawn already lies
Reddening on the wide, transparent skies.
Love’s star is a white sail the still seas hold.
Here, in the light-soaked space above the wold,	5
Through the descending dew the arches rise
Of the unseen cathedral, filled with cries
From the winged weavers threading it with gold.
Here on the hill, the cypress, in accord
With me, stands praying: a cowled eremite.	10
And on the roses’ cheeks the tears fall light.
Upon my cell the patterned rays are poured.
And in the East, the purple vines bleed bright,
And seething, overflow…. Hosannah, Lord!

When I started reading the poem, I had to remind myself that the author is Russian and the sonnet was not originally written in English.  I didn't have much luck finding the original Russian version, but I guess I would have even worse luck understanding the original had I actually found it, considering I don't know much Russian beyond "my name is Hannah" and "I am allergic to wheat."  I had a hard time reading The Alchemist with full confidence in the words on the page because I knew that someone had translated the book from Portuguese to English and undoubtedly lost some of the meaning in the process.  Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsk, the translators of Ivanov's sonnet, deserve some recognition for (if not preserving the poem's meaning in its entirety) piecing together a sonnet with impressive diction and rhythm.  

"The Holy Rose" is grouped into an octave and a sixth, which seems to work just fine with the flow of the poem.  At first, I assumed that the "rose" in question was a woman.  However, a closer read gives me the sense that the rose is the sun rising.  It must be a rather overwhelming and humbling sunrise if it drives the author to call himself a cowled eremite in a cell (a hooded, God-fearing hermit), unless he is referring to the cypress... I haven't quite figured that one out.  Either way, he's building up the anticipation and beauty of the sunrise so steadily with each line that I can just imagine the narrator being knocked over upon seeing the sun come up over the horizon, emerging from an "unseen cathedral" (I love that part).  My favorite excerpt upon first reading this sonnet was the purple vines bleeding bright in line 13, but the image described in lines 6 and 7 makes my head hurt, it's so good.  This is one poem I wouldn't mind keeping around.