Oliver is forced to work long days for little compensation. Oliver’s view on poverty in workhouses is that he hates that workhouses are places where children are sent to die. He believes that all of England views it as a solution to poverty, where all of England openly sees it as a way to kill of their poverty situation. Oliver’s view of this can be seen in comments from Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist. Every child “had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world”.(5) Through this quote one can see the kind of world Oliver was living in. Oliver was always seeing poor treatment of himself and others. He was always seeing young children die on a consistent basis because places like the workhouse he was a part of rarely gave a decent amount of food in order to survive or they were never given the necessary tools to survive in warm or cold climates. The quote also shows the mistreatment and the poor environment that came with living in locations like a …show more content…
Oliver hated workhouses because it had made people believe that it was the only way of surviving if one had nothing in life. In Oliver Twist, Mrs. Mann mistreats the children at the workhouse. She does this by giving them little food. They receive only enough to barely survive. And even sometimes that food that they are given still leads to many deaths that result at a cause of starvation. In a scene in Oliver Twist, Oliver clearly knows what happens if a child asks for more food. They are punished or sold into what resembles basic slavery. One of Oliver’s companions in the workhouse claims he will turn cannibal if he doesn’t get more food. He threatens to eat one of the other children in their sleep if he doesn 't receive more food. This results in the other children drawing straws to see who gets the shorter one. Oliver draws the short straw and is pressured into asking for more food. The people in charge are baffled at Oliver for asking such a bizarre question that he is put up for sale. Before asking for more food Oliver was aware of the possible punishment that he was going to receive if he asked for more food. However, with full knowledge, he asked. Oliver must have seen this as a way to leave the workhouse in a clean way without escaping and risking the possibility of further