Oliver Twist (Oliver Twist) reading notes
Caption: A world where good and evil bloom together – this is Dickens’ best evaluation of his work. I think it also applies to “Oliver Twist”.
The first time I read this book was in junior high school. At that time, my teacher told me that it was a fairy tale. Due to limited knowledge and experience, my 13-year-old teenager’s understanding of fairy tales is limited to: fairy tales are a literary genre, and the author generally shapes images, reflects life, and educates children through rich imagination, fantasy and exaggeration. At that time, after reading this book, I was skeptical about the fact that this book was classified as a fairy tale. That kind of implicit suspicion and oppression became relieved after rereading this book today. Here, we will only reinterpret the previous arbitrary label of Fagin and Nancy as bad and good.
Fagin means “Fagin” instigator. From the name Dickens gave to this character, we can know that Fagin is by no means good. He gathered the children and lured them to steal for a long time. After Oliver was adopted by Mr. Brownlow, he was caught back in the thieves’ den again, giving people a feeling of haunting old villains. It doesn’t seem to be all right now. First of all, we didn’t realize the impact of the proposition that Fagin was a Jew on the characters before. The living conditions of Jews were not optimistic under the social background at that time, so it’s easy to understand why Fagin fell to the bottom of the society and engaged in theft; Secondly, those who used to be angry only saw him abetting children to steal. In fact, he also provided shelter, clothing and food for the children in the den of thieves; Also, Oliver was shot in the arm and caught back in the thief’s den, and it was also Old Fagin who bandaged and drugged him; Finally, on the night before his execution, Old Fagin also told Oliver where he hid his “savings”. I don’t mean to say this for the bad guys. I just want to say that Fei Jin is not a bad guy in my eyes, but for whatever reason, he will be punished if he does something wrong.
Nancy, a very important role among the orphans of Fog City. Dickens had a deep intention when naming characters. Nancy and Sikes, the English abbreviations of which are N and S, are the two poles of the magnetic needle. They constitute a pair of contradictions, namely, opposition and unity, both opposite and complementary, and can never be separated. Nancy cannot leave Sikes, and would rather be killed by him than abandon him; And Sikes couldn’t do without Nancy. Once he lost her, he would lose his soul. Finally, he fell on the roof, and his neck was caught by the buckle of one of his own rope and died of anger. I used to think she was good, but now it’s not true. She steals things; When she was persuaded to leave, she did not choose to start again; Even when Oliver was lucky enough to be adopted by a good man, it was her who took him back to the den of thieves. At the same time, from her more than one maintenance of Oliver, it can be guessed that many years ago, she was as simple as the little boy in front of her. Slowly, she adapted to this life of stealing that she was unwilling to live. Oliver’s appearance reminded her of her former self. She did not want Oliver to become the same as she is now. She completed her own redemption with her life, and was a very powerful person.
The above two characters are also good and evil, which is also the embodiment of the common blooming of good and evil in the inscription.
After watching the film version of Oliver Twist, you will find it very appropriate to translate the title into Oliver Twist. All kinds of evil deeds in the almshouse, the church and the den of thieves appear in the works. Most of the pictures in the film are set in the fog. I think that the “fog” has the following two meanings: the gray fog is the result of the capitalist industrial revolution, but it is not the reflection of the loss of class privileges, money supremacy and human nature.
The Fog City Orphan looks miserable, but Dickens gives the story a complete ending of good and evil. In his parallel universe, there are several bright candlelight in the dark, which gives a little light to the suffering. Happy ending is no longer my understanding of fairy tales. The significance of fairy tales is never to let people forget the pain of reality, but to give people the power and hope of not being reconciled.
In fact, there is no “fog” in today’s society. Money, power, distractions and desires, dispelling the fog, and strengthening the purest and clean belief in the heart, will surely see the sun shining on the earth after the fog, like the protagonist of the novel, and have a bright and hopeful future.
