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.