The atmosphere is proven to be dirty and suffocating by Dickens use of the verbs ‘muddy’ and ‘narrow’. Additionally, the verb ‘impregnated’, meaning soaked and/or saturated, allows the audience the imagine the ‘filthy odors’ being so prevalent an individual is unable to breathe. Williams states that within a London of ‘darkness’ an individual “must escape, or try to escape, from … […the…] … repulsive and degrading mass” (Williams 222). Audience can detect that Oliver longs to get away from the city as soon as he enters when he is ‘considering whether he hadn’t better run away’. The hell aspect of the darkness can be symbolized by having Oliver end up at the bottom of a hill, signifying that he is a long way down, much like people refer to hell as being below earth and heaven in the clouds. Finally, Williams declares that the city “in many minds … […was…] … so over-whelming, that its people were often seen in a single way” losing their individuality and humanity (Williams 222). The loss of humanity and grouping of individual’s can be depicted within the children described in the extract. All the children are represented in the same animalistic format, ‘crawling’ about the streets like rats and ‘screaming’ from inside their locked cages longing to escape. This graphic scene also takes place at night, a time associated with crime and literal darkness. During the period of Oliver Twist, the countryside was an escape from the city, for that reason the London of ‘light’ is exhibited as a heaven like place in Dickens’ novel. These ideas are brought to the attention of the readers in the extract when Oliver describes the educational opportunities offered to him and how even the poor are better off in the
The atmosphere is proven to be dirty and suffocating by Dickens use of the verbs ‘muddy’ and ‘narrow’. Additionally, the verb ‘impregnated’, meaning soaked and/or saturated, allows the audience the imagine the ‘filthy odors’ being so prevalent an individual is unable to breathe. Williams states that within a London of ‘darkness’ an individual “must escape, or try to escape, from … […the…] … repulsive and degrading mass” (Williams 222). Audience can detect that Oliver longs to get away from the city as soon as he enters when he is ‘considering whether he hadn’t better run away’. The hell aspect of the darkness can be symbolized by having Oliver end up at the bottom of a hill, signifying that he is a long way down, much like people refer to hell as being below earth and heaven in the clouds. Finally, Williams declares that the city “in many minds … […was…] … so over-whelming, that its people were often seen in a single way” losing their individuality and humanity (Williams 222). The loss of humanity and grouping of individual’s can be depicted within the children described in the extract. All the children are represented in the same animalistic format, ‘crawling’ about the streets like rats and ‘screaming’ from inside their locked cages longing to escape. This graphic scene also takes place at night, a time associated with crime and literal darkness. During the period of Oliver Twist, the countryside was an escape from the city, for that reason the London of ‘light’ is exhibited as a heaven like place in Dickens’ novel. These ideas are brought to the attention of the readers in the extract when Oliver describes the educational opportunities offered to him and how even the poor are better off in the