Fate and Free Will Quotes - Oliver Twist | Oliver Twist - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

In one instant the whole mystery of the handkerchiefs, and the watches, and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy’s mind. He stood for a moment with the blood tingling through all his veins from terror, that he felt as if he were in a burning fire; then, confused and frightened, he took to his heels. (10.15)

This is the moment of truth for Oliver – it’s the moment he realizes what the Dodger and Charley are up to, and it’s the moment of conscious rejection. Oliver has a choice, and he makes it. Too bad some of the other members of Fagin’s gang were never really given a choice…

"Once let him feel that he is one of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief, and he’s ours,– ours for his life!" (19.83)

This is obviously Fagin speaking, and he’s gloating over the idea of how Oliver’s going to be forced into helping Bill Sikes and Toby Crackit rob a house, and then he’ll be corrupted forever. Wait, what? There’s no turning back? It’s not like when you spill bleach on your jeans – yes, that’s forever. But even if Oliver did commit a crime, or help others to commit a crime – does that make him a criminal forever? Doesn’t he get a choice? Is it always one or the other? Is there no chance for redemption in this novel?

"The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call up some long-forgotten feeling; and the best of them is, that it never lasts. Ha! ha!" (19.103)

This is Fagin, deciding that Nancy has totally gotten over her sympathy for Oliver. This quotation sets up a couple of extremes – worst and best, "little things" and "long-forgotten feelings." And Fagin suggests that all women embody all those extremes – but that "it never lasts." He at first suggests that Nancy might have a really complicated psychology, but then throws that idea out by saying that "it never lasts." Also, by setting up that generalization (this is how all women are), Fagin dooms Nancy to living her life in one of two extremes – does she have no choice in the matter? Is it always one extreme or the other?

The boy was lying fast asleep on a rude bed upon the floor, so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed: when a young and gentle spirit has but an instant fled to heaven, and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed. (19.107)

How can you escape being corrupted? Easy. You have to die. Yeah, so Oliver appears incorruptible in this scene because he looks like his soul just left his body, so that the "world" around him hasn’t "had time" yet to corrupt him. Even Fagin can’t bring himself to wake the kid when he looks so angelic. Obviously he’s not actually dead – so what’s Dickens saying? Why is Oliver so darned hard to corrupt? It’s like he has access to some kind of inner store of virtue that he can tap into when he sleeps, so Fagin is having a hard time running him out – that well o’ virtue just keeps getting refilled.

There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble as it pleases. So far as an overpowering heaviness, a prostration of strength, and an utter inability to control our thoughts or power of motion can be called sleep, this is it; and yet we have a consciousness of all that is going on about us. (34.65)

Sleep is obviously important to this theme in Oliver Twist – because when you fall asleep, you give up your ability to choose for yourself. This is a kind of sleep that isn’t peaceful or refreshing, but "holds the body prisoner," and is "overpowering." In a book as obsessed with imprisonment and giving up your free will as Oliver Twist, it’s important to notice that lots of different states can be states of imprisonment – even sleep.

A paper fly-cage dangled from the ceiling, to which [Mr. Bumble] occasionally raised his eyes in gloomy thought; and, as the heedless insects hovered round the gaudy net-work, Mr. Bumble would heave a deep sigh, while a more gloomy shadow overspread his countenance. Mr. Bumble was meditating, and it might be that the insects brought to mind some painful passage in his own past life. (37.1)

This novel is all about imprisonment, confinement, and incarceration – both literal and metaphorical, and how those things are related to freedom of choice and fate. So for Mr. Bumble, who’s been one of Oliver’s chief oppressors and incarcerators, to be sighing and "meditating" on a "fly-cage," is a pretty big turn-around. It’s like Mr. Bumble finally understands one of the main themes of the book.

The girl’s life had been squandered in the streets, and the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something still of the woman’s original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own shame, and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview. (40.51)

Two interesting things about this passage: first, there’s the assumption that there is some "original nature" common to all women, and which even a life like Nancy’s, which was "squandered in the streets […] and dens of London" can’t stamp out or obliterate. Second, is the contrast that Dickens is trying to create between Nancy (in spite of the "woman’s original nature" that she still retains) and Miss Maylie. Rose’s "light step" is in contrast to the dark and "noisome" "stews and dens" in which Nancy has grown up. Rose even approaches the room (a kind of common ground) by the opposite door from the one Nancy entered.

"Let me go," said the girl with great earnestness; then, sitting herself down on the floor before the door, she said – "Bill, let me go; you don’t know what you’re doing – you don’t, indeed. For only one hour – do – do!" (44.34)

Nancy and the other members of Fagin’s gang usually seem to be controlled by some form of fate, rather than by free will. Nancy has already exercised her free will once, by going to see Rose, and now Fate – in the form of Bill – is taking control again.

‘I am chained to my old life. I loathe and hate it now, but I cannot leave it. I must have gone too far to turn back,-- and yet I don’t know.’ (46.74)

Seriously, why can’t Nancy leave her old life? This novel is obsessed with imprisonment, and fatality: once you start a life of crime, it’s impossible to turn back in this novel. And Nancy’s fated to stick it out with Fagin’s gang; she says she is "chained" to that life. It’s an important choice of words – she can’t escape.

The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocity of the crowd and the impossibility of escape. (50.89)

Sikes climbs out onto the roof in his final escape attempt, and realizes that there’s no escaping from the fury of the mob – it’s not the "inevitability of justice" or anything moralistic like that that he’s confronted with here, it’s the brutal "ferocity" of a crowd of fellow humans whose sole intent is his capture and punishment.