Question

character sketch of Mr Oliver in the story of my life

Answer 1

Oliver, an orphan boy (son of Edwin Leeford and Agnes Flemming) is the kiddie protagonist of the novel. A dear, grateful, gentle child who “instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too much.” He is also a link among three different worlds depicted in the novel – the workhouse, the crime world, and the world of the genteel middle class people. He is therefore more a symbol than a fully individualised character. In the opening sentence of the novel Dickens describes him as an “item of morality”. Dickens wanted to make him an instrument of exposing the inhumanity and the callousness of the workhouse and the underworld during the Victorian Era. He belongs to the class to which Huckleberry Finn and Becky Sharp belong. He is a mobile character and the novelist makes him freely come across the different cross section of the society.