Oliver Twist

Dickens's later, more psychologically complex novel about class and childhood -- where Oliver Twist uses a passive innocent to expose the system, Great Expectations uses a flawed narrator to expose himself

Another Victorian orphan who endures institutional cruelty (Lowood) before finding love and identity -- Jane fights back where Oliver cannot, making her the active counterpart to his passivity

The American twin: a child escaping abusive institutions, navigating a corrupt society, and forming bonds with the marginalized -- Huck has the agency Oliver lacks, and Twain's satire is as savage as Dickens's

Dickens's other exploration of systemic injustice and individual sacrifice -- the French Revolution replaces the English Poor Law, but the argument is the same: institutions that crush the poor eventually produce their own destruction

The French counterpart: a convict protagonist, institutional critique, a child victim at the center, and the same argument that society manufactures the criminality it then punishes

A twentieth-century novel making a parallel argument: that systemic oppression produces the very behavior the system uses to justify continued oppression -- Bigger Thomas is what Oliver could have become without the fairy-tale rescue