The novel "Oliver Twist" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle

The man who had the most opportunity to be cruel to Oliver was, in fact, Mr. Bumble, a selfish and grasping man who held the dubious honour of being the parish beadle.

The only beadles still in England have ceremonial functions but no actual power. They exist in places such as universities and the City of London. In Dickens' time, the beadle was a salaried minor parish official who had various duties, including, in this case, the supervision of the orphans in the workhouse. He often made sure they were kept down, ragged, half-starved and fearful. When a child was nine or ten years old, he or she "outgrew" the right to parish relief, and was apprenticed out to do some menial drudgery.

Answer: Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker

Oliver was indeed apprenticed to Mr. Sowerberry, who liked him well enough and promoted him to the rank of a junior mute. However, this didn't last, for two reasons. First, although Sowerberry liked him, he (Oliver) was greatly disliked for various reasons, by Mrs. Sowerberry, the Sowerberry servant Charlotte, and the charity boy employed there, one Noah Claypole. Secondly, Oliver got in a fight with Claypole, who made very insulting remarks about Oliver's dead mother Agnes.

Answer: Jack Dawkins, The Artful Dodger

When Oliver and the Dodger met up, Oliver was half-starved (almost fully so) as he had walked all the way to London without any food, and the trip had taken him seven days. It wasn't surprising that when the Artful Dodger offered the poor boy some food, and the promise of a night's lodging with a friend, the offer was immediately accepted.

Answer: Hanged

The character of Fagin was a sinister and evil portrait of a man who is both an infamous criminal, and a miser. Dickens drew him as a Jew, thus showing he (the author) was not exempt from some of the prejudices of many Victorian (Christian) people. Fagin was identified as a Jew dozens and dozens of times.

In a later Dickens novel, "Our Mutual Friend", there was another Jewish character who was also an old man, known as Mr. Riah. This character was a good person, and Dickens seems to have created him in response to protests from Mrs. Eliza Davis about the Fagin cariacature. However, Mr. Riah never became well-known, whereas Fagin is very famous.

Answer: Mr. Brownlow

Mr. Brownlow first rescued Oliver from the prospect of jail. Brownlow never lost faith in Oliver, even when circumstances looked bad for him. The two characters' fates became entwined as a result of many of the Dickensian coincidences occurring in the plot of the novel.

Answer: Master Bates

In Victorian times, a boy was addressed formally as Master, with Mister used for an adult male. Fagin's use of this respectful-sounding term suggests he was teasing the lad.

Answer: The prostitute named Nancy (no surname given)

Nancy was Bill Sikes' lover. It is difficult for the reader to accept that she was always loyal to Sikes and protected him from discovery, since she was so badly abused by him. When Sikes discovered she had put Oliver out of reach, his repayment for her love was to brutally murder her with a bludgeon.

Dickens had a lot of trouble with the character of Nancy, not least of which was the fact he wished to create a prostitute without actually saying so, due to the conventions in polite society in the Victorian era. Dickens was also constrained by his tendency to draw his women characters as angelically good, or else "gone to the bad" altogether. Of course Nancy was both.

Answer: Pauper in the same workhouse Oliver had to live in

Mr. Bumble in fact married Mrs. Corney, a dreadful woman who, like him, existed on the money she could squeeze out from the "system", by denying provisions to the paupers. Bumble married her for her money, but lived to quickly regret his bargain as she was so unpleasant a character. Mrs. Bumble had a part in the plot; it was revealed that she stole at secondhand from Oliver's dead mother, and sold her secret to the evil Monks, Oliver's half-brother whom he didn't know existed. Both the Bumbles ended their days by having to become paupers in the workhouse where they were once so cruel to others.

Answer: 1837

"Oliver Twist" was Charles Dickens' second novel, coming just after he wrote "Pickwick Papers". These were his very earliest works; he began "Oliver Twist" when he was thirty-five. Thus it is not really surprising, for example, that the plot line and structure are so tangled and convoluted. Dickens had not had much experience in working out the details and coincidences for which he became known for, in his later works.

Answer: The murder of Nancy, by Bill Sikes

Dickens died prematurely at fifty-eight; he had experienced serious health problems for the previous three or four years. His doctor eventually forbade him to enact such sensational scenes from some of his novels, as these readings placed a great strain upon him, both physically and emotionally. Dickens completely disregarding the doctor's warnings.

It was as if he only really came alive during his readings, when he could and did act out scenes of passion and violence. He collapsed, and died within a day, in the room in which he wrote, in his own home on June 9, 1870.