Narrator and point of view

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is narrated by a third-person narrator who is omniscient, with access to the thoughts and feelings of all the characters. In particular, we are often shown what Oliver is thinking. For example: “And now, for the first time, Oliver, well-nigh mad with grief and terror, saw that housebreaking and robbery, if not murder, were the objects of the expedition.” (Chapter 22, 60%). This is an example of how the narrator often uses Oliver’s thoughts and feelings to show that he is a fundamentally good and kind boy.

We also frequently have access to the thoughts of other characters. For example, although Fagin is an unsympathetic and evil character, the narrator explains how Fagin feels when he learns that he has been sentenced to death: 

As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold; some of them through his means. […] Some of them might have inhabited that very cell-sat upon that very spot. It was very dark; why didn’t they bring a light? The cell had been built for many years. Scores of men must have passed their last hours there. It was like sit...