relations at all to having an intricate web of both blood relations and concerned guardians all of whom wish to care for our hero and contribute to his well being. The extraordinary and improbable fairytale of a boy who wins the love of his guardians before his blood ties are revealed to them, suggests the fulfilment of an innocent and childlike fantasy and serves to demonstrate the authors desire to be portrayed as a purveyor of family values and of the binding powers that they should ideally provoke. Indeed, Dickens himself had a rather painful and detrimental childhood and on his father being imprisoned for debt during the author's early adolescence, he found himself being forced to work in a factory to survive; an experience that Dickens would later be ashamed to confess publicly and which perhaps inspired his desire to depict a severely impoverished child such as Oliver Twist finding satisfaction and happiness against all odds.
             However, before Dickens progresses to depict Oliver's 'happily ever after' ending in the tale's finale, the child painfully explores a variety of surrogate families and parents. Oliver's initial exposure to a legal guardian is through 'Mr Bumble', a man who exploits and deplores him as a greedy, impolite, even violent ruffian, despite the blatant evidence that the boy and the rest of his social group are starving from a physical and mental malnutrition based on a deprivation of food, hygiene and basic care. This negation of fatherly duties and refusal to accept full responsibility for Oliver or indeed any of the children under his supervision, eventually leads to Bumble placing his charge with another substitute family group as an apprentice funeral assistant.
             Under Sowerberry's care, Oliver is yet again penalised for being a poor and orphaned parish boy and this time endures mistreatment by an older character of similar descent. It is interesting to note...