15% done with Oliver Twist

Dickens’ humor of describing people as things and their actions with a scientific irony does play nicely with the way all the characters treat Oliver as a thing. Obviously this is nothing new – treating people as things hearkens back to slavery and one’s enemies in wartime – but it’s also a little overdone.

Dickens really ramps up the melodrama and everyone is such a bastard that any point he’s making is wasted.