论《雾都孤儿》中的善良 --毕业论文

论《雾都孤儿》中的善良 --毕业 【标题】论《雾都孤儿》中的善良 【作者】舒 艳 【关键词】《雾都孤儿》;善良;人物形象;影响 【指导老师】Charles Dickens is one of the greatest critical writers of Victorian Age. Particularly, he is good at describing the life and condition in mid-nineteenth century London. In his early works, Dickens expresses his belief of kindness. Oliver Twist is one of 【专业】英语 【正文】 I. Introduction A. Introduction of the Author and the Novel Charles Dickens was a realistic writer in English literature. He was born on February 7, 1812 in England. In his early years, he worked as a reporter and this experience gave him a good knowledge of the political life of England at that time and it had a far reaching effect on his lifelong contempt for all the political institutions as practice in England. As the result of his ability to notice things of London life, a volume of stories and sketches of London street scenes, Sketches of Boz, was published. In 1837, his first novel Pickwick Papers appeared and established his reputation as an important writer of the time. This success was repeated again and again during the rest of his life, with the publication of some 15 novels as well as volumes of stories, travelogues and countless sketches and essays. In his very early literary period, Dickens attacked one or more specific evils in Victorian England: debtors’ prison, workhouse, Yorkshire schools, capital punishment and so on.1 Oliver Twist, written in 1837-1838, told the story of an orphan boy, whose adventures provided a description of the lower depths of London. Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse in 1830s, England. His mother, whose name no one knew was found on the street and died just after Oliver’s birth. He was brought up in the workhouse where he and other orphans were maltreated and constantly starved. One day, because Oliver asked for more gruel, he was sent to an undertaker to work as an apprentice, Noah Claypole, made disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother. Unable to bear it, Oliver attacked him and ran away to London. There he fell into the hands of a gang of thieves headed by old Jew Fagin. In the thieves’ den Oliver was taught the skill of pocking and stealing and was forced to steal. He was rescued for a time by the kind-hearted Mr. Brownlow. But Nancy and other gang members found him and brought him back. It finally turned out that a mysterious man Monks wanted to make the boy a criminal. Oliver was once forced to help a burglar, Bill Sikes, in a burglary. In the course of it, Oliver was shot and badly wounded, the kind care from Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose brought him back to health. Nancy, who repented for what she had done, tried to help Oliver. She told Rose and Mr. Brownlow of the mystery about Oliver’s origin and was found out by the gang and brutally murdered by Bill Sikes. Persuaded by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hanged himself while trying to escape. Fagin was arrested and executed .It was known that Monks was the half -brother of Oliver and he did all this for the purpose of seizing the whole of their father’s property. Rose was revealed in the end to be the sister of Oliver’s dead mother. Oliver was finally adopted by Mr. Brownlow. Monks was exiled and died in prison. Bumble, the self-important beadle of the workhouse who had conspired with Monk, became an inmate of the workhouse over which he formerly ruled. B. The Background of Oliver Twist At the beginning of 19th century, England was rapidly undergoing a transformation from agricultural, rural economy to an industrial, urban nation. The economy of this country was developing rapidly; the gap between the rich and the poor was bigger and bigger. A new class-middle-class emerged. In the stratified English class structure, the highest social class belonged to the “gentlemen,” an aristocrat who did not have to work for his living. The middle class was the class who had to work. In order to alleviate the stigma attached to the wealthy middle class, they promoted work as a moral virtue. Because the middle class felt insecurity about their own social legitimacy, many of them were anxious to be differentiated from the lower class, while the poor was suffering the cruel treatment and was stigmatized as a class which was lazy and good-for-nothings. Earning wealth was a sign of moral virtue in the eyes of middle class; the condition of poverty was a sign of the weakness of the poor individual. The sentiment behind the Poor Law of 1834 reflected these beliefs mentioned above. The Law allowed the poor to receive public assistance only if they lived and worked in established workhouses. Begging carried the punishment of imprisonment. For the conditions of the workhouses were deliberately made to be as miserable as possible, the poor would rather die quickly than be starved by a gradual process in the house. Therefore many poor people were starved in the streets. II. Kindness A. Definition of Kindness Kindness is described as the quality of being warmhearted and considerate and humane and sympathetic.2 It is what gives the world warm. It brings a touch of beauty to every day they live. Kindness is the oil that takes the friction out of life. Kindness is loved expressed in little things. It is respect for the feelings of others. Kindness is conversation that centers on the good qualities of others. Kindness is often so acknowledged that although sometimes the effects of it are not satisfying, people won’t blame the kind people much. Kindness lingers not only in space and time, as a subtle energy, but deeper still in people’s hearts, for they realize this kind of power to precipitate change for the better. Yet the greatest hidden treasure is the capacity to express love through kindness. A philosophy of kindness creates better friendship, relationships, and peace in the world at large. Kindness is very useful for people to conquer the bad of the world and sow the seeds of a great humanity. B. Some Forms of Kindness Kindness takes many forms and can be demonstrated effectively in a variety of ways. An employer can expect improved work from a subordinate when kindness is shown. A mother praising her child can look forward to improvement in some accomplishment. A writer whose book or story is kindly critiqued will work even harder on the next attempt. Kindness can make the day for a person who is facing disappointment and distress. Kindness takes someone off the judgment seat and puts someone on the mercy seat. III. The Kind-hearted Characters in Oliver Twist A. Oliver Twist 1. Oliver Twist’s Image Oliver Twist, as a child hero of this novel, is meant to get much sympathy from readers. In this novel, some evil forces surround him, but he remains unaffected, and his natural kindness and instinct for survival help him to overcome the odds of life. Thus he establishes himself in the world of respectable people who cherish the values of honesty and integrity. In a sense, Oliver is not a believable figure, although he is raised in corrupt surroundings, he remains pure in body and mind. When he sees Charley Bates and the Artful Dodger pick a stranger’s pocket, he is shocked and feels horrible. When he is forced to take part in a burglary, he is also shocked and begs them not let him do this thing. Oliver’s moral scruples about the sanctity of poverty seem inborn in him. Even when he is abused and manipulated, Oliver does not become angry or indignant. When Bill Sikes and Cricket force him to assist in a robbery, Oliver merely begs to be allowed to “let me run away and die in the field. I will never come near London; never, never! Oh! Pray have mercy on me, and do not make me steal. For the love of all the bright Angels that rest in Heaven, have mercy upon me!”3 Oliver talks less but observes and perceives more. He shows his helpless when he is unjustly punished and denies his rights. However, when tested by the force of circumstances, he displays an inner strength to protect himself. In a word, Oliver does not present a complex picture of a person torn between good and evil. He is a typically kind person. 2. Oliver Twist’s Kindness How can such a little boy who had already suffered oppressive affliction remain pure in body and mind? The reason is the nature of kindness. It is the most important information implied in the novel by Dickens. He believed that kindness could conquer every difficulty. Although kindness is not omnipotent, yet people who are kind-hearted live more happily than those who are evil-minded. One of the plots that attract people most is that after the theft, little Oliver is allowed to recover in the kind care of Mrs. Maylie and Rose and begin a new life. He goes for walks with them and he works hard at his lessons. He feels as if he has left behind forever the world of crime and hardship and poverty. Even when evil forces surround him, he remains unaffected, and his natural kindness and instinct for survival help him to overcome the odds of life. Thus he establishes himself in the world of respectable people who cherish the values of honesty and integrity. B. Mr. Brownlow 1. Mr. Brownlow’s Image Oliver regards him as a godly man possessing the virtues of goodness and greatness, when he comes back to meet Mr. Brownlow after a period of time, the good man welcomes him with open arms. Mr. Brownlow feels responsible to provide Oliver with respectability and security. In order to ensure the identity of the boy, he persuades Monks to reveal the true story of Oliver’s birth. He also restores the boy’s share in his father’s property. He wards off the evil forces from Oliver’s life and provides the boy with love and security. Once he is Oliver’s benefactor, he becomes his guardian. Brownlow’s character is an admixture of the many traits normally found in people. Basically kind and generous, Mr. Brownlow has some common, questionable characteristics. He is often impatient and curt. At times, he cannot resist teasing his dutiful housekeeper. In the pursuit of his objectives, he is not always governed by the most commendable regard for legal and ethical considerations; or, to express the essence of his character in another way, Brownlow is a man who, when it suits him, allows the ends to justify the means. But still, Brownlow is a selfish man for whom benevolence is an active principle. To have good intention is not enough for him and he must express his impulses in energetic action. It is as an activist that Brownlow prosecutes Oliver’s cause. After the old gentleman takes over the management of the boy’s affairs, he becomes the acknowledged leader of the honorable company gathered around Oliver. 2. Mr. Brownlow’s Kindness In this novel, there are some examples that can show Mr. Brownlow’s kindness. One day, Mr. Brownlow’s elaborate watches are stolen by two skilled teenage thieves, Artful Dodger and Charley Bates. Mr. Brownlow thinks naturally it is Oliver, who is an orphan and forced to live with a gang of thieves, that has done it, because he is the only one near by after the theft has taken place. Being wrathful, he catches Oliver, and sends him to the police station where the ill-tempered, unfair magistrates work. Fortunately for him, Oliver is proved innocent by one onlooker afterwards. With sympathy, Mr. Brownlow takes the injured, poor Oliver to his own home. There Oliver lives freely and gleefully for some months as if he were Mr. Brownlow’s own son. Another day, Brownlow’s friend, Mr. Grimwig, arrives to visit. Grimwig, a crotchety old man, hints that Oliver might be a boy of bad habits. Brownlow bears his friend’s eccentricity with good humor. Mrs. Bedwin brings in a parcel of books delivered by the bookstall keeper’s boy. Grimwig suggests that Brownlow send Oliver but hints that Oliver might steal the payment and the books. Wishing to prove Grimwig wrong, Brownlow sends Oliver on the errand. It shows his belief and care in Oliver. In the street, the thief Oliver once stayed with kidnaps him. It grows dark and Oliver does not return. After that he disappears in Mr. Brownlow’s life. But Mr. Browlow never gives him up. He publishes an advertisement offering a reward of five guineas for information about Oliver’s whereabouts or his past. Mr. Brownlow has to believe the fact that Oliver has run away with his money. But not long after Nancy and Rose’s meeting, Oliver tells Rose that he ever saw Mr. Brownlow on the street. Oliver and Mr. Giles have ascertained Brownlow’s address, so Rose immediately takes Oliver there. Mr. Grimwig is visiting when they arrive. Rose tells Brownlow that Oliver wants to thank him. Without hesitation, Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver home for the second time not caring that he took the money away. Mr. Brownlow helps the boy without consideration of pay. This is just the lesson everyone should learn from him. C. Rose 1. Rose’s Image Rose is a young lady of good breeding and perfect chastity. Dickens portrays Rose as a charming young woman who is also warm, sensitive and cultured.4 As the ward of Mrs. Maylie, she takes care of Oliver when he is laid up in bed and becomes his companion after recovers. She understands his needs and provides him comfort and security. She takes pity on Nancy and tries to reform her. She takes Mr. Brownlow into confidence by revealing Nancy’s story to him. Unsure of her origins, she refuses Mr. Harry Maylie’s proposal even though she loves him. After her true status is revealed and when Mr. Harry decides to settle down in a village as a parson, she marries him. She is a Good Samaritan who wishes the best for everyone around her. Her heart is a reservoir of love. Thus she feels happy to strengthen her bond of friendship with Oliver, when it is revealed that she is his aunt. As an admirable Dickensian womanhood in all its glory, Rose is good for propaganda, but terrible for story. Being a person of sterling worth, incorruptible by human complexity and inconsistency, she is correspondingly uninteresting, particularly in contrast with Nancy. In fiction, as in life, angels tend to be less memorable than colorful characters. 2. Rose’s Kindness Rose is Oliver’s benefactor. Maybe the reason she loves and cares Oliver is not because of forgiveness. It is trust. She has faith in Oliver when he is considered to be a filthy burglar who tries to break the front door of Maylie’s at midnight. But this isn’t how this lady sees the whole thing. Miss Rose exclaims that he cannot possibly be a burglar unless older, evil men have forced him into the trade. She begs her aunt not to send the child to prison. Mrs. Maylie replies that she intends to send him to prison nonetheless. They wait all day for Oliver to awake in order to determine whether he is a bad child or not. Oliver relates his life history to them that evening, bringing tears to the eyes of his audience. She denies Oliver’s crime immediately and listens attentively to Oliver’s own description of his miserable life. She is deeply touched by Oliver’s strong perseverance and astonishing vitality. Accordingly, she remedies Oliver’s body and heart and turns him into a different boy. He begins to wear appropriate and clean suits which are tailor-made for him and receive education. Through Rose’s reaction to Oliver, Dickens presents delinquency as a problem determined by culture rather than by innate character. Upon seeing Oliver, Rose imagines his entire history at a glance. Unlike most adults who have tried to second-guess him, Rose’s hypotheses about his past and personality are accurate. She surmises that Oliver takes part in the attempted burglary because he has never “known a mother’s love” or because he suffers “ill-usage and blows” and “the want of bread.” She names all the miserable conditions of poverty that may have “driven him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt.”5 Like Brownlow, and unlike the English legal system, Rose believes in forgiveness and kindness. Dickens uses these characters, who believe that Oliver is innately good but born into a bad environment, to show that vices can be combated by improving the material conditions of the poor rather than by punishing them. Rose recognizes that Oliver’s surroundings have determined his behavior but not necessarily his nature, and, as a result, for the first time in his life Oliver is given the chance to narrate his life history on his own terms. This event is an important step in establishing his identity as separated from his surroundings. As far as it can be seen, it is trust that helps live together without precaution. Sometimes trust can even lead people to miracles, which people often expect to come about, so why not trust? Trust yourself, trust others, and you’ll salute miracles every single day. D. Nancy 1. Nancy’s Image A major concern of Oliver Twist is the question of whether a bad environment can irrevocably poison someone’s character and soul. As the novel progresses, the character who best illustrates the contradictory issues brought up by that question is Nancy. As a child of the streets, Nancy has been a thief and drinks to excess. The narrator’s reference to her, “she wear a good deal of hair, not very neatly turned up behind, and is rather untidy about the shoes and stockings. She is not exactly pretty, perhaps; but she has a great deal of colour in her face, and looked quite stout and hearty. Being remarkably free and agreeable in her manner”6, indicates that she is a prostitute. She is immersed in the vices condemned by her society, but when she sacrifices her own life in order to protect Oliver; this may be the noblest act in this novel. Nancy’s moral complexity is unique among the major characters in Oliver Twist. The novel is full of characters that are all good and can barely comprehend evil, such as Oliver, Rose, Mr. Brownlow, and characters that are all evil and can barely comprehend well, such as Fagin, Bill Sikes. Only Nancy comprehends and is capable of both good and evil. Her ultimate choice to do good at a great personal cost is a strong argument in favor of the incorruptibility of basic goodness, no matter how many environment obstacles it may face. Nancy’s love for Sikes exemplifies the moral ambiguity of her character. As she herself points out to Rose, devotion to a man can be “a comfort and a pride” under the right circumstances. But for Nancy, such devotion is “a new means of violence and suffering.”7 Indeed, her relationship with Sikes leads her to criminal acts for his sake and eventually to her own death. The same behavior, in different circumstances, can have very different consequences and moral significance. In much of Oliver Twist, morality and nobility are black-and-white issues, but Nancy’s character suggests that the boundary between virtue and vice is not always clearly drawn. 2. Nancy’s Kindness In last, Nancy meets Mr. Brownlow and Rose on London Bridge and leads them to a secluded spot. Nancy’s decision to confront Rose with information about Oliver stands in opposition to her earlier decision to drag Oliver back to Fagin. Just as Nancy causes Oliver to become a thief earlier in the novel by sending him to Fagin, her decision to reveal the information she holds regarding his inheritance may cause him to become wealthy. Furthermore, Nancy’s honorable act demonstrates that there are different levels of vice and that an individual who partakes of one level does not necessarily partake of the others. Nancy has been a thief since childhood, she drinks to excess, and she is a prostitute. Despite these tainting circumstances, however, she is incredibly virtuous where the most important matters, those of life and death, are concerned. With her character, Dickens suggests that the violation of property laws and sexual mores is not incompatible with deep generosity and morality. In many ways, Nancy, the paragon of vice, appears here as more virtuous than Rose, the paragon of virtue. Rose stands to lose nothing by helping Oliver, but Nancy could lose her life. Fagin’s central threat to keep his associates from acting against his interests is the threat of legal “justice.” He knows in intimate detail the criminal activities of everyone in his social circle. Fagin can send Nancy to the gallows for talking to anyone outside his circle of criminal associates. Nancy regrets her life of vice, but she refuses Rose's offer to help her change it. Nancy sees herself, as Rose puts it, as “a woman lost almost beyond redemption.”8 It seems as if she herself assimilates to the judgments that intolerant characters like Mr. Bumble have passed upon her. Yet Nancy’s love for Sikes is more crucial to her decision to return to her old life than any belief that she has strayed too far from the path of moral kindness. The different light in which society treats Nancy’s and Rose’s romantic attachments reveals the extent of its prejudices against the poor. It is considered a virtue when a woman like Rose is unconditionally faithful to a respectable young man like Harry Maylie. Yet when a woman like Nancy displays the same fidelity to a dreadful fellow like Sikes, it becomes “a new means of violence and suffering.”9 This contrast demonstrates that socioeconomic status has the power to color all aspects of an individuals’ life, even the private emotions of love and sentiment. IV. The Influence of Kindness A. The Influence on Twist The hero of this novel is Oliver Twist, an orphan, who is thrown into a world full of poverty and crime. He suffers enormous pain, such as hunger, thirst, beating and abuse. The nature of kindness saves the boy. Even when evil forces surround him, he remains unaffected, and his natural kindness and instinct for survival help him to overcome the odds of life. When the boy meets troubles, Mr. Brownlow forgives the boy, Rose trusts the boy, and Nancy helps the boy at the cost of herself. The kindness eventually conquers devil and Oliver lives a happy life in the end. B. The Influence on Life and People As is known, kindness is very important in this novel. In my opinion, kindness is also very important in realistic society. The nature of kindness is one of the most necessary characters for a person. Goodness is to humans what water is to fish. He who is without kindness is an utterly worthless person. On the contrary, as the famous saying goes, “The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.”10 He who is with kindness undoubtedly is a happy and useful person. People receiving his help are grateful to him and he also gets gratified from what he has done, and thus he can do well to both the people he has helped and himself. While it’s disappointing that nowadays some people seem to doubt the existence of the kindness in humanity. They look down on people’s honesty and kindness, thinking it foolish of people to be warm-hearted. As a result, they show no sympathy to those who are in trouble and seldom offer to help others. On the other hand, they attach importance to money and benefit. In their opinion, money is the only real object while emotions and morality are nihility. If they cannot get profit from showing their “kindness”, they draw back when others are faced with trouble and even hit a man when he is down. Therefore, bless you all today with a heart full of kindness. V. Conclusion In the novel, though the young Oliver again and again is put into conspiracies of those hideous thieves, who try to torture Oliver’s body and poison Oliver’s heart intensely, he always lives on and tries hard to seek for his own life. Then everyone realized what support him all through are actually beliefs. In most cases, what you believe is what you’ll become. Believe that you are unlimited, that you can do anything you commit to doing, and when you do, your accomplishments will know no bounds. You control your beliefs and that is how you ultimately control your life. It’s all dictated by your attitude. Kindness is a virtue of human beings. In Oliver Twist, Dickens creates many kind figures. He believes that all the evils of the world would be remedied if only men treated each other with kindness. That is to say a person without kindness is destined to lose everything. Therefore, this paper wants to tell people to learn from kindness and the kind figures in Oliver Twist and to show the nature of kindness.