Contrasting Regions Quotes - Oliver Twist | Oliver Twist - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Darkness had set in; it was a low neighbourhood; no help was near; resistance was useless. In another moment he was dragged into a labyrinth of dark, narrow courts, and forced along them at a pace which rendered the few cries he dared to give utterance to, wholly unintelligible. (15.63)

Oliver’s just been kidnapped by Nancy and Bill Sikes, and they immediately drag him into a "labyrinth," which is described as "low, "dark", and "narrow." We’ve all been through neighborhoods like that (or at least, we can imagine them). But it’s the word choice here that’s important – why a "labyrinth"? The whole point of a labyrinth is that once you’re in, it’s impossible to get back out of it. And that’s the idea that Dickens is trying to convey – once Oliver turns down the wrong path (literally or figuratively), he’ll never get back on the right one again. It’s like the city itself is part of the system that’s trapping and controlling Oliver (and all the other members of Fagin’s gang).

He kept on his course through many winding and narrow ways until he reached Bethnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon became involved in a maze of the mean dirty streets which abound in that close and densely-populated quarter. (19.4)

Fagin’s on his way to visit Bill Sikes and Nancy, and yet again, we’re in a "maze" (okay, last time was a "labyrinth," but close enough). To become "involved in a maze" sounds like getting into something that you can’t get out of – it seems to us that Fagin has gotten himself into something (knowingly or not) that he can’t extract himself from too easily.

Or maybe it’s the people who already live in these "mean dirty streets" who are trapped in them, and unable to get themselves out? Again, it’s like the city itself is part of the system that controls all the people of the lower classes – or maybe we’re just getting paranoid.

Who can tell how scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness deep into their jaded hearts? Men who have lived in crowded pent-up streets, through whole lives of toil, and never wished for change; men […] who have come to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks. (32.51)

So if the city is part of what confines and controls and imprisons the lower classes (it has "pent-up streets"), the country refreshes and renews and liberates them. This is all very idyllic, and it’s easy to laugh at it, but it does fit in with the theme of imprisonment and control that Dickens has been associating all along with the city, and with institutionalized authority.

The rose and honey-suckle clung to the cottage walls, the ivy crept round the trunks of the trees. (32.52)

This description of the garden at the Maylies’ country cottage shows the contrast between the cramped and imprisoning urban setting, and the relative freedom of the country – even the flowers are allowed to grow where they will (on the walls, around the trees), rather than be stuck in beds and in rows.

Hard by, was a little churchyard: not crowded with tall, unsightly gravestones, but full of humble mounds covered with fresh turf and moss, beneath which the old people of the village lay at rest. (32.52)

Compare this to the graveyard of chapter five, where Mr. Bayton’s wife was buried. In that city graveyard, the poor folks were crammed into the same grave, so that Mrs. Bayton’s coffin was stuffed under just a few feet of earth, and the minister mumbled the funeral service in about four minutes before running off again. What sets the country churchyard apart is the spaciousness – the graves aren’t cramped together – and also the fact that the graves don’t have any unnatural gravestones, but are kind of at one with the earth.

The poor people were so neat and clean, and knelt so reverently in prayer, that it seemed a pleasure, not a tedious duty, their assembling there together; and, though the singing might be rude, it was real. (32.54)

This provides some more contrast between the country church in the Maylies’ village, and the big workhouse chapels where the poor people were forced to march every Sunday.

To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of water-wide people. (50.2)

Again, the streets in the city are metaphorically described as a "maze" – easy to lose yourself, and difficult to get out again. It’s also crowded ("thronged") and claustrophobic ("close" and "narrow"). In this part of the city, there’s no freedom – you’re always pent-up, and potentially lost in the "maze."

In such a neighbourhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob’s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in these days as Folly Ditch. (50.3)

This muddy area actually existed in Dickens’s time (it’s not there, or no longer in this condition, nowadays). It’s on the very borders of London, and surrounded by water – but only sometimes. It’s kind of a watery, muddy, border territory between the city and the surrounding country, but the continual rise and fall of the tidal river keeps it covered in filth from the city. Even on the edge of the city, the grime and contamination of London still infects it.

[…] rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter. (50.4)

Compare this description of Folly Ditch to earlier descriptions of the country landscape in the village where the Maylies go on vacation. Here, the rooms are "confined," while in the country, everything is open and free. The country air heals people, while the air in Folly Ditch is "too tainted even for the dirt and squalor."

Charles Bates […] turned his back upon the scenes of the past, resolved to amend it in some new sphere of action. […] from being a farmer’s drudge and a carrier’s lad, is now the merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire. (53.12)

Charley gives up crime and moves to the country. It’s important to notice that he didn’t just give up crime and stay in London. Why not? All the characters in this novel who aren’t dead (like Nancy and Sikes) and who don’t remain criminals (like Noah and Charlotte) leave the city for the country. Is Dickens trying to say that it’s better to avoid the city altogether if you don’t want to become a criminal?