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.
When I read "Grendel" geography played a crucial role in shaping Grendel's personality. However, its opposite to what happened to Oliver. Grendel starts out by living in a cave with just his mother and some unknown creatures in the dark. However, the creatures don't notice him at all and his mother doesn't speak, leading to Grendel basically being alone at not look at. It's when he finally ventures out of his cave through curiosity that he finds the real world and it finally noticed by humans (they see him as a dangerous beast that wants to kill them, but hey a win is a win). He then literally becomes a beast and goes on to kill the Danes and destroy their mead hall. It was only after venturing outside that his true nature was revealed and he was finally noticed. I also noticed that whenever he would leave his cave, he had to swim through a pool of fire snakes which acted like a baptism into evil. Hopefully Oliver had redeeming qualities in him. I've never read Oliver Twist but judging by your reaction it's probably a really good novel. Good job.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy looking at the importance of place and geography in books. I think that something that a lot of our books have in common is a movement of people to a different place in order to find themselves. For Oliver, that's London. For Gatsby, it's New York. It's super interesting how place plays such a big role not only in literature, but in our own lives.
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