130 pages • 4 hours read
Charles DickensOliver Twist
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1838A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 51-53Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 51 Summary: “AFFORDING AN EXPLANATION OF MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, AND COMPREHENDING A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OF SETTLEMENT OR PIN-MONEY”
Oliver and his many guardians travel by coach to Oliver’s birthplace. Mr. Brownlow has told Oliver and the women about Monks’s confession. Oliver is now aware that his older half-brother has been plotting to keep their father’s will secret. Oliver keeps crying out and pointing out landmarks that he is familiar with. Oliver wants nothing more than to see his friend Dick again. He hopes that “we’ll take him away from here, and have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet country place where he may grow strong and well” (607). Rose agrees to this happily.
Oliver continues to point out different landmarks from his old life but he realizes that things have “somehow fallen off in grandeur and size” and that things are no long as big and scary as they had once been (608). The adults busy themselves with many things when they finally arrive at the hotel, but Rose and Oliver are kept out of the loop. This makes them “nervous and uncomfortable” and they sit together in uncertainty (609). That night however, everyone enters the room, and Mr. Brownlow brings along Monks, who turns out to be the man who accosted Oliver near the inn.
Monks is introduced to Oliver as his half-brother. Mr. Brownlow explains that Oliver’s parents are Edward Leeford and Agnes Fleming. Monks then goes on to tell the tale from his perspective. Monks and his mother found his father’s will on his desk as he was dying in Rome. There was a letter addressed to Agnes and a will that explained how he wished to divide the property between his two children, on the provision that if his unborn child was a boy, that the child get his money only if “he should never have stained his name with any public act of dishonor, meanness, cowardice, or wrong” (612).
Monks’s mother burns the will and the letter is never allowed to reach Agnes. Monks’s mother finds Agnes’s family and tells them what became of Edward, though she does her best to paint him in as bad a light as possible. Agnes’s father’s flees from the village with his other daughter while Agnes runs away from home. Though her father tried his best to find her, he realizes that she must have taken her own life. Mr. Fleming dies of a broken heart. Before Monks’s mother died, she told him about Mr. Fleming and her suspicions that Agnes had not committed suicide. Monks swears to his mother that he will find the bastard child and ensure that it is hanged. Monks explains that Fagin is an old friend of his and was under his employ to keep Oliver entrenched in life as a criminal. Fagin was desperate to find Oliver again as he would have lost a portion of his profit if he lost the boy; this is why both men appeared in the country to look for Oliver.
Monks goes on to tell the company that he bought the identifying jewelry from Mr. and Mrs. Bumble. Mr. Grimwig brings in the Bumbles, and the former beadle pretends that he always liked Oliver. The assembled company tells them to identify Monks but they both pretend they have never seen him before. It is revealed, however, that the two old women who cared for old Sally as she died eavesdropped on the conversation between Sally and Mrs. Bumble. Furthermore, they followed her and saw her buy the jewelry from the pawnbroker.
Mr. Brownlow says that they will ensure that “neither of you is employed in a situation of trust again” (616). Upon hearing this, Mr. Bumble attempts to place the blame squarely upon Mrs. Bumble. Mr. Brownlow says that does not exonerate him of guilt and that furthermore, in the eyes of the law, his “wife acts under [his] direction” (617). The Bumbles leave. Mr. Brownlow says that there is a part of the story that involves Rose. Monks continues speaking, saying that after Mr. Fleming died, he’d left a young daughter with some villagers.
When Monks’s mother saw her living with villagers, she lies to them about the girl’s family and history to make them hate her. Despite Monks’s mother’s efforts, a kindly window eventually took in the little girl. The girl is Rose, which makes her Oliver’s aunt. Rose and the people in the room embrace and cry. Oliver says that Rose is not his aunt but his “dear sister” (619). The others leave the room and Harry Maylie enters.
Harry asks if Rose has changed her mind about marrying him and she says no. Rose says that the death of her father and her sister’s dishonor still fall upon her; she does not wish to blight Harry’s name and prevent him from advancing socially and professionally. Harry then tells Rose that he has given up all of his political stations, his uncle’s inheritance, and his standing in high society for her. Harry tells her that he wishes to be a minister with his own small church and he wants Rose to be his wife.
Rose and Harry join everyone for dinner and Mr. Grimwig, Losberne, and Brownlow all kiss Rose on the cheek to congratulate her on the engagement. Everyone is delighted but Oliver is seen to be crying. When Mrs. Maylie notices she asks him what is wrong and she discovers that Dick is dead.
Chapter 52 Summary: “FAGIN'S LAST NIGHT ALIVE”
Chapter 52 focuses primarily on Fagin. The narrative picks up with Fagin staring at the jury that is meant to decide his fate. The old man is sitting in a courtroom and being stared at by the many spectators, who look at him with abject horror. Fagin is scared because “in no one face–not even among the women, of whom there were many there– could he read the faintest sympathy with himself, or any feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned” (625). Fagin observes everyone about him, wondering at the cost of the judge’s dress. However, through all this, Fagin is haunted and preoccupied by his own looming death.
Eventually, it is announced that the jury has found Fagin guilty. He is to die on Monday. The spectators cheer at the news. Fagin is numb as he is brought back to his cell alone, without a friend in the world. Fagin is unable to stop thinking about his sentence and his fate, that on Monday he is “to be hanged by the neck till he was dead” (628). This drives Fagin mad and he begins speaking to himself and banging on the door and walls. The guards watching him begin coming in twos so that none have to remain alone with Fagin. Though rabbis are brought to say Fagin’s last rites, he curses and swears at them until they depart.
Late the next day, Mr. Brownlow and Oliver arrive to ask about where Fagin might have hidden Monks’s many secret papers. Fagin tries to get Oliver to help him escape but Oliver can only cry and pity Fagin. Fagin eventually tells Oliver that the papers are in a bag in the chimney of the old house. Oliver wants to pray with Fagin but the old man begins screaming and holding onto the young boy. Mr. Brownlow and Oliver leave the prison in a hurry. As they leave, they notice that people have already begun to arrive in anticipation of the execution.
Chapter 53 Summary: “AND LAST”
Chapter 53 catches up with the characters three or so months later. Harry and Rose get married at the church where Harry will preside. Mrs. Maylie moves in with her son and daughter-in-law. It is revealed that Monks squandered most of the inheritance Leeford meant to leave both of his children. Though the money rightly belongs to only Oliver and Oliver alone, Mr. Brownlow convinces the boy to share it with his half-brother. Oliver gladly does so and leaves them both with around £3,000. Monks flees with his portion of the money, wastes it all, and ends up dying in a prison in America after embarking on “some fresh act of fraud and knavery” (637). It is also revealed that all that remains of Fagin’s gang also die “far from home” (637).
Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver as his son and they move, along with Mrs. Bedwin, to a house within a mile of the Maylie’s. Mr. Losberne also moves to be with his friends. Mr. Grimwig apparently visits often and always critiques Harry’s sermons despite secretly thinking that they are brilliant. Noah Claypole is exonerated for his crimes because he becomes a witness for the prosecution and he and Charlotte decide to become paid informers for the Crown. Charley Bates gives up his life of crime and works on a farm happily in Northamptonshire. Mr. and Mrs. Bumble become paupers in the same workhouse where they used to work. Mr. Giles and Brittles continue to work for the Maylies but they also spend a great deal of time at Mr. Brownlow’s estate.
Rose and Harry have many children and Mr. Brownlow loves Oliver as he would his own son. Both orphans find happiness, joy, and people who love them. The books ends with a description of a white marble tablet that hangs in the small church; it has the word “Agnes” on it, and serves to honor the memory of Oliver’s mother and Rose’s older sister.
Chapters 51-53 Analysis
Dickens ties up the loose ends and seeks to give every character an appropriate ending, and in most cases, their comeuppance. Oliver and Rose have both found picture-perfect happy endings that they never believed they would be allowed. As orphans, they viewed themselves as burdens on those who care for them. Oliver and Rose, the kindest characters in the novel, are given complete happiness for the trials that they have suffered. While Dickens undoubtedly is attempting to critique the class system and the injustices of stratified society, some believe that his reveal that Oliver and Rose both come from respected families refutes the point he tries to make about the inequalities of the time period.
Oliver and Rose do not change throughout the book. They are unmoving characters, inherent in their goodness; they can even be viewed as symbols rather than characters in their own right. They represent morality and righteousness and though they may be neglected and ignored, they ultimately prevail. Conversely, Charley Bates is dynamic and multifaceted. Charley initially finds crime and the pain of others quite funny. He believes everything is a joke and is often described as laughing uproariously in decidedly unfunny situations. After the death of Nancy, however, Charley tries to fight Sikes, and it is ultimately his shouting for help that results in the police finding Sikes. It is revealed that Charley gives up his life of crime and becomes a farmhand. Charley is the only one of Fagin’s gang to be redeemed.
Fagin’s death makes it clear that he is the ultimate villain in the novel. Fagin represents greed, corruption, and insatiability; Dickens’s anti-Semitism is also made especially clear as he describes the old man’s evilness and lack of redeemable qualities. Fagin, who has kept himself as much as possible, finally faces the inevitability of his own demise. After sending countless boys and co-conspirators to their deaths, death comes for Fagin: “The boom of every iron bell came laden with the one, deep, hollow sound—Death. What availed the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which penetrated even there, to him? It was another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning” (629). Fagin faces an altogether different death than the one portrayed at the end of the novel.
While Fagin dies alone, surrounded by those who gather to watch him burn, Agnes Fleming is relocated to the church near where Oliver, Rose, and the rest of their friends live. Dickens writes, “I believe that the shade of Agnes sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I believe it none the less because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak and erring” (641). There, Agnes and her family finally find happiness that is free of desperation, greed, and corrupt institutions.
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