Oliver, an orphan born at the bottom of society, was raised by the church and sold to a coffin shop for offending the parish director. As an apprentice, because he was bullied by the coffin shop owner and helpers, he decided to leave the small town where he lived and go to London.
After walking on foot for seven days, he arrived in London, where he met the thief "Smart Ghost", who strayed into the thief gang of Jewish old man Fagin.
Fagin originally thought that Oliver knew and had learned the skills of stealing, so he asked Oliver to steal together with the "smart ghost". Witnessing Mr. Brownlow's pocket watch being stolen by the "clever ghost", the kind Oliver just realized that he had strayed into the den of thieves, but at this time he was speechless.
After the bookstore owner confirmed Oliver's innocence, the kind-hearted Mr. Brownlow brought the terminally ill Oliver home for recuperation. Fagin, worried that Oliver will shake off his criminal gang, asks his friends Sykes and Nancy to bring Oliver back.
In order to punish Oliver and make him return to the criminal gang, Fagin ordered Oliver and Cesc to help his colleague Bill enter Mr. Brownlow's room to steal. Middle left arm.
Bill handed the injured Oliver to Fagin, and an angry Sykes tried to get rid of Oliver. Nancy who knew the truth secretly contacted Mr. Brownlow and told the truth to Mr. Brownlow - the "smart ghost" who discovered the matter reported to Sikes and Fagin, Sikes was angry and killed Nancy.
The City of London police began to want Sykes and Fagin, Fagin took his thief gang to the abandoned factory, and the desperate Sykes also came after hearing the news. The onlookers and the police had surrounded them. Sikes took Oliver as a hostage and tried to escape through the window, but was caught by the reins around his neck and hanged on the iron frame of the factory.
Fagin, a miser who was imprisoned, was almost insane. When Oliver went to visit Fagin in prison, Fagin hugged him in his arms, and Oliver cried. Eventually, Fagin was also hanged.
The most commented on the film is: as a humanitarian writer, compared to Hugo's stormy attack and Balzac's ruthless irony of the world, Dickens's writing is much gentler. Dickens used the story of Oliver Twist to sing praises for kindness, lash out against evil, ruthlessly expose the darkness of society, and make a powerful indictment of the corruption of those in power.
However, such abstract rhetoric is meaningless, like telling unthinking stories to babies - because every good story has contradictions, and does contradiction mean black and white opposites? Babies can point out good and bad people with their hands, but the real world is much more complicated.
Why does darkness exist?
"Oliver Twist" was created in the Victorian era of England, when the development of capitalism made Britain a superpower. But beneath the prosperity lies poverty and misfortune. When the means of production were monopolized by a few people, wealth accumulated in the upper classes of society, and class contradictions gradually intensified.
The parish is a place where the poor gather, and people from humble backgrounds work day after day (Oliver's parish in the movie is making the reins of a sea ship for the queen), and the food they get is extremely meager. "Oliver Twist" was created when the "Poor Relief Law" was passed, and the so-called "Poor Relief Law" was nothing but public assistance and exploitative labor. In order to prevent the poor from relying on public assistance and forcing them to endure unimaginably painful labor, the ghetto, dressed as a "diocesan", became so disreputable that many would rather die than seek public assistance. Children in the parish, who are skinny and hungry, pray "thank God for the food".
As Oliver's partner in the workhouse, when Oliver was about to flee, he turned to the wall to say goodbye to Oliver, and said to Oliver with tears,
"I heard the doctor tell them that I'm about to die, and it's nice to see you. Dear Oliver, but don't waste your time and go! …I know the doctor is right, Oliver, for I keep dreaming of heaven and angels, of the kindness I never see when I wake up Face, kiss me." A
kind soul is not nurtured, a kind heart is like the light of a candle, and it is born to be shrouded in sin.
The entire workhouse is trapped under cannibal nuns and tyrannical supervisors. As Engels put it:
"In essence, the poor are treated as prisoners, the workhouses are treated as prisons for punishing criminals, and the people living in the workhouses are treated as people outside the law, as the embodiment of all evil..." Does
society create evil,
or does evil constitute society?
The British society in Dickens's writings flows with turbulent undercurrents under the fresh coat. In the movie, Oliver stumbled into the burglary gang to give some background to the slums at the time. People quarreled, fought, and drunk. Compared with Fagin's burglary gang, more serious crimes were bred.
Oliver, the protagonist of the story, was undoubtedly lucky, but the outcome was not due to his kindness. It is an idealized misreading to interpret "Oliver Twist" as "good will be rewarded with good and evil will be rewarded with evil". In the real world, the "Olivers" who are skinny and skinny may have abandoned their good intentions and made a living by murder, arson, theft, and other crimes.
Therefore, good people have to rely on luck to survive, which is the greatest irony and greatest sadness of the story.
At the end, Fagin, who was about to be hanged, saw Oliver hold him in his arms, and said tremblingly,
"Oliver, do you remember the treasure I hid in the attic? I'll give it to you, take me out of here, Get me out of here..." The
audience would be loathsome and pitiful for this ugly old Jewish man with reddish-brown hair. Compared with the vicious parish director, Fagin was obviously not the most benevolent and righteous. For the children who pickpocketed for him, he affectionately referred to them as "friends," without pressing or humiliating them. Instead, he grilled sausages and prepared wine and bread for them.
When Oliver arrived, he also let Oliver enjoy the food; after Oliver was shot in the left arm by Sykes, Fagin treated him carefully. Fagin was not an isolated and one-sided image of a miser who was addicted to money. So when Oliver came to visit in prison, he prayed for him with tears, and also showed Fagin's kindness in his heart.
He and these unidentified children not only established a criminal gang, but also established a symbiotic relationship with each other. It is true that pickpocketing is a sin, but this premise is that they are regarded as "outcasts" of society from birth, only opposed to ordinary society, and there is no room for improvement.
From their standpoint, compared to the dark days in the workhouse, where they waited to die in pain, the benefits of their crimes were obviously greater than the sacrifices.
After Fagin's death, what about the children? Instead of being hanged or imprisoned, he would most likely be sent to a workhouse, and he would live an inhumane life ever since. The high-pressure government puts contradictions in the pot, which is bound to brew more criminals.
The delicate relationship between Nancy and Sykes also reflects the unique contradictions of low-level marriage. The story does not tell the relationship between the two candidly, but based on the relationship between the two living together, it can be regarded as a husband and wife relationship. Sykes can be said to be the biggest villain. He is addicted to alcohol and has a violent personality. He will scold and abuse his dog, Nancy, and people around him at every turn.
Nancy couldn't do without Sykes, despite Sykes torturing her in every way, she still loved Sykes deeply, on the other hand, it also showed that she couldn't leave, implying the lowliness of her female identity. Sykes was also inseparable from Nancy, and when he lost her, he would not leave her. After Nancy's whistleblowing, Sikes killed her in a fit of anger. What Sikes resented was not the awakening of Nancy's kindness, but Nancy's escape from his control and his enemy.
Nancy's image is very three-dimensional. Her love for the villain Sykes has no destination, nor does her kind heart. She wanted to strike a balance between the two (tell Mr. Brownlow the truth, but withheld Sykes' name), and ended up dying at the hands of those she wanted to protect. Dickens was also very meaningful when he named the two people:
Nancy and Sikes, the abbreviations N and S are the two ends of the magnetic pole, they constitute a pair of contradictions, both Opposition and unity, opposite and complementary, neither unity nor separation.
In the story with Oliver as the main line and Fagin's theft gang as the branch line, Nancy and Sykes undoubtedly reflect the unfortunate marriage of the bottom people. struggling in the sea of misery. In the face of Sykes, who is both a husband and a criminal, Nancy's struggles are vivid on paper, but she is ultimately inclined to be kind and die.
Interpretation
The old school of criminal law believed that man's crimes were all based on free will, that man was a rational and selfish animal, and that the psychological causes of all crimes exist in man's sensibility. The pain of being punished for committing a crime is greater than the pleasure of the crime.
Just like Oliver, who is also an orphan in Oliver Twist, chooses to abide by kindness, while the "smart ghost" chooses to follow Fagin to carry out theft, so the old school believes that it is not so much that society breeds crime, but rather that people breed crime. In other words, it is the belief that the Fagin's gang is considered deserved to live in a workhouse, and that the cost of crime is too low, and the proceeds of crime are too great to be punished.
However, such penalties were meaningless (as the government seemed to be at the time). Everyone knows that people eat when they are hungry, and drink water when they are thirsty. In times of famine when there is no food, cannibalism may occur. The solution to starvation theft by the poor is not to impose heavy sentences, but to solve the problem of food production and food distribution.
So, the new school's view is that crime is not based on human free will. Crime is not accidental, but a combination of anthropological factors, natural factors and social factors, Fei Li believes:
"Whatever the situation, from the least to the most cruel, is no more than the physical state of the perpetrator, It is the result of the interaction between the natural conditions in which it lives and the social environment in which it was born, lives or works.”
If Dickens is not trying to talk about things, then probably what he wants to express is: every society has its own The occurrence of these crimes is caused by natural and social conditions, and their quality and quantity are compatible with the development of each social collective. Don't think about why Oliver is kind and "clever" is going to steal, because in such a social context, it also appears that "clever" is kind and Oliver is going to steal, they are just criminal and non-criminal representative symbol. Therefore, the new school studies crime from an empirical level, and pays attention to the causal relationship between the external and the crime.
The interpretation of famous works can always be seen by the benevolent, and the wise see wisdom. But a soft heart, giving of kindness, and unleashing compassion do nothing.
Just like critical realism, it always depicts the tragic life of ordinary people in detail, but only stays in the depiction stage and cannot find a way to lead the people out of suffering. Although they sympathize with the suffering people, they do not know how to help the people change the bourgeois society, nor do they know who should be responsible for all this.
This article was written by Wang Qier and was originally published on the Tengtian Kuiying public account. Welcome to pay attention. Please contact us for reprinting.
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