Oliver Twist: Chapter 32 Summary & Analysis

It is typical of Oliver that, even as he is on the brink of serious illness again, he is only worried about what he might contribute to the Maylie household. It later becomes clear that Oliver's presence is a gift enough—the Maylies are overjoyed to have a young boy in their midst.

It does seem hard to imagine that this flop-house, which was more or less hidden when Oliver and Sikes approached it earlier, should be visible in broad daylight from the street—but the scene ensuing is powerful, and strange, enough to make this recognition worthwhile.

Dickens appears to be scrambling the readers' expectations in this scene. One would imagine that the house would have some kind of link to Crackit, or perhaps to Barney, but instead one finds an old hermit who has been living there several decades. This weird blip—either Oliver's mistake or a strange confusion of another kind—is never ironed out or explained in the novel.

This seems like a hitch in Oliver's plans, an instance of bad luck no longer in keeping with his positive state of affairs. But Brownlow will return to the narrative quickly. The West Indies, like Australia in "Great Expectations," is a place so far away as to seem almost mythical—as though Brownlow had travelled all the way to the moon.

This scene is one of the first of Oliver's encounters with the beautiful natural surroundings near the Maylies' home. Oliver was raised in a village in the countryside, but his life was mostly spent in institutions, thus he was not able, nor did he have the time, to run about and see grass, trees, sunlight. Then Oliver was taken in by Fagin and the boys in London, and those squalid city conditions, too, did not allow for much recreation. The depiction of the country is paradisiacal compared to Dickens squalid depictions of much of the city.