Reviews with content warning for Classism - Oliver Twist

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Reviews tagging 'Classism'

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

12 reviews

lillygabriella's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I had only read an abridged children's version of this before and seen several movie adaptations, including a BBC miniseries, which upon reading the book I discovered was actually fanfiction. Only France goes hard for accuracy in their national literature I guess.

So, if like me you have only seen movie versions, know that there was a lot of serious character rehabilitation performed in all of the movies, especially where Fagin, Nancy, and Jack Dawkins aka The Artful Dodger are concerned.

Other than that, it is pretty standard for a nineteenth century novel: Never use one word when fifty will do. Clearly the man was paid by the word. And was in this work definitely on the side of Nature over Nurture.

I'm glad I read it. It's good to know how the classics actually go.

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lauren_shilling's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

Before I start this review, it should be noted that I had to read this for school and would not have picked this up on my own, so take my review with a grain of salt. I really enjoyed the first quarter of this book. After that, it felt a bit boring to me. It sounds odd to say it was boring, because so much was happening, but I just didn't really care about any of it. I feel as if there were too many characters to keep track of. and some of them could have been condensed into one character. I liked Oliver's character at first, I found him to be sweet and I really felt for him, but as the novel went on, I found him to be less and less realistic. The whole point was to showcase just how good Oliver Twist is in contrast to the harshness of society, but it might have been taken too far for me. Oliver just felt a bit too good to be true after a while. Other characters like Rose also made me feel that way. This is not a terrible book in my opinion, and I definitely see why it's a classic and why Dickens is such a classic author, but it also definitely wasn't for me.

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linnylionheart's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

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hadadelamiopia's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated

3.5

I enjoyed this book and I like the commentary on social class and the workhouses. It’s a good book for analysis, but it can get a little boring sometimes and the descriptions at the beginning of each chapter can be a little unnecessary.

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abiofpellinor's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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chriswoody94's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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theskyisthelimit's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Overall, the writing and story were phenomenal. In fact, a certain misfortune upon a certain character made my eyes water just a little for a book (or movie, or story) for the first time. Absolutely terrific! The only things that really kept it from being five stars was the romance, as it felt rushed and unnecessary, and the slight lack of depth in Oliver’s character. I would have liked to see Oliver’s personality other than simply his morals or attitude (i.e. his interactions with Dick, the orphan boy Oliver became good friends with). I also find it worth mentioning that while some have commented on the misogyny in this book as a negative quality, I must disagree. You’ll notice the characters clearly depicted as “bad” are the misogynistic ones and those that are good or at least somewhere in the middle oppose it. Not to mention, some of the kindest and bravest characters are women, so if anything, I would say this book, while not necessarily feminist, is certainly anti-misogyny.

Nancy’s death made me quite sad (even though I knew what was going to happen ahead of time) and the death of Sikes stood out to me as singularly grotesque save for deaths written by Poe himself, and I greatly applaud Charles Dickens for his spectacular writing in these two instances specifically.

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