Literary Devices in Oliver Twist

At the end of the lesson, students will be able to identify and provide the illustrations on literary devices in Oliver Twist.

Alliteration, Onomatopoeia and Personification in Oliver Twist

1. Alliteration

A phonetic stylistic device that aims at imparting melodic effect to the utterance. The essence of this device lies in the repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonant sounds, in close succession, particularly at the beginning of successive words:

It was Smithfield that they were crossing, although it might have been Grosvenor Square, for anything Oliver knew to the contrary. The night was dark and foggy. The lights in the shops could scarcely struggle through the heavy mist which thickened every moment and shrouded the streets and houses in gloom; rendering the strange place stranger in Oliver's eyes; and making his uncertainty the more dismal and depressing.

The repetition of the sound [s] and [d] prompts the feeling of fear, horror, anguish or all these feelings together.

On the other hand, by the end of the novel the usage of alliteration helps to depict a jollier atmosphere which inspires hope and reliance on new prospects.

The sun--the bright sun, that brings back not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory.

The repetition of the initial sounds of the stressed words integrates the utterance into a compositional unit.

2. Onomatopoeia

A combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating sounds produced in nature, by people, by things and animals. While describing a market day, Dickens creates a palette of deafening cacophony:

Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, idlers, thieves and, vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a mass; the whistling of drovers, the barking dogs, the bellowing and plunging of the oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths and quarrelling on all sides; the ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued from every public-house...

The onomatopoetic effect is achieved by a combination of words ending in '-ing' at certain intervals. It helps to create an intense rhythm for the whole utterance as if reflecting a wide and varied range of activities: frantic, suspicious, possibly illegal and subversive.

3. Personification

As a literary device, personification is the projection of characteristics that normally belong only to humans onto inanimate objects, animals, deities, or forces of nature. These characteristics can include verbs of actions that only humans do or adjectives that describe a human condition. The characteristics can also be emotions, feelings, or motives given to objects incapable of thought. One good example, however, comes just after Bill Sikes murdered Nancy, and is used to describe the sun as it rises the next day:

The sun--the bright sun, that brings back not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray. It lighted up the room where the murdered woman lay.

Note how the sun is described as "bursting" upon London as it spreads its bright rays everywhere. In a sense, this personification describes the sun as if it was a person "bursting" into a room, so sudden is its arrival and the way that it brings joy and light to everything and shines its rays upon all objects, even those such as the body of Nancy. This example of personification is important because it also captures an important imagery throughout the novel, which is the way light and dark imagery is used to capture the goodness of certain characters such as Oliver and the way this goodness is threatened by other characters such as Fagin and Sikes.

Symbolism, Metaphor and Personification Video

Exercise

You see many references to light and dark in Oliver Twist. How do you interpret this?

Some words in Oliver Twist may be euphonious (pleasant sounding) or cacophonous (harsh sounding) What impact does this have? Give examples.