Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens (1838)
“An orphan boy who asks for more gruel gets pulled into London's criminal underworld -- and somehow stays good while every institution designed to protect him fails.”
Character Analysis
Oliver is the novel's most debated character because he is, in conventional terms, barely a character at all. He does not develop, does not change, does not make meaningful choices. He is polite, honest, and gentle from his first breath to his last page. Critics since George Orwell have noted that Oliver is less a person than a moral test administered to the world: how he is treated reveals the moral quality of every institution and individual he encounters. His passivity is deliberate -- Dickens wanted to show that the workhouse, Fagin, and the criminal justice system act upon the poor rather than responding to their actions. Oliver does not cause anything that happens to him. That is the point.
Speaks in grammatically correct, polite English from his first appearance -- 'Please, sir, I want some more' -- despite having been raised in a workhouse with no formal education. His speech never adopts thieves' cant or working-class dialect.