Evening star., 1949-02-26
Vice and Virtue Seen
Fairly Distributed
Among All Races
Dickens in 'OIiver Twist
Wos Attacking Conditions
In England at His Time
By Dorothy THOMPSON

IL v NOF Uth.V HOHpSO"
It is understandable that Jews,
whose people were massacred in
Germany. should be revolted by
film in which a Jew is depicted as
an evil character, as they were
when oliver Twist" was shown
in Berlin. Jews rioted and forced
the film to be withdrawn.
But the revulsion, though un-
derstandable. was hysterical, not
rational. For neither Dickens
novel nor the film made from it
is anti-Semitic. Indeed, if riots
were in order, British forces
of occupation would have been
equally justified in expressing fury.
Fagin, in the story, the Jew
who runs a school for thieves, is
only one in a large gallery OF
rogues, all the others being gentle
Britons. Dickens was hopping
mad when he wrote "Oliver Twist, !"
in 1888. His researches had un-
covered conditions in almshouses
where parochial bureaucratS,
supposedly dispensing Christian
charity to helpless orphans,
starved and beat them, paid pri-
vate enterprise to take them OF
their hands as apprentices
actually as slaves-left them in
ignorance. and exposed them to
depravity.
Most Poisonous Venom.
The infant Oliver Twist, having
been farmed out to a woman who
stole money given her to feed
orphans. who died in eight and
one-half cases out of TO-" ad-
vanced to home where
one kind word or look had never
lighted the gloom"
The presiding genius OF this ap-
palling institution was the beadle,
Mr.. Bundle, for whom Dickens
most poisonous venom was re-
served, and the members of the
parish board, who to sadism added
pharisaical piety. 1t was not OF
Fagin that Oliver Twist asked
for more-another helping of nu-
tritionlesS gruel-but Of those
noble overseers of the poor, for
which temerity he was doused with
cold water. f1ogged, and put into
solitary confinement.
Character after character enters
Dickens rogueS' gallery, in this
combination of melodrama and
social tract, every variety of rogue,
from every social class: Mr.. Gam
field, whose villainous counte-
nance was a stamped receipt for
cruelty" prepared to apprentice
Oliver as a sweep because he was
thin enough to pass through CHM
neys-with a good chance of be-
ing roasted; Mr.. SoWerberry. the
cofflnmaker. who finally got Oh
liver, enabling Dickens to reveal
the horrid cruelty of the poor to
the poor, in a family including
Charlotte, the heartless slavey,
and Noah, the bestial charity
boy"
Seamy Side of England.
Running away from all this,
Oliver is sucked into the under
world of London, where new gar
goyles enter: Bill Skies, who per-
forms a hideous murder; THE
Artful Dodger";; "Mr." Charles
Bates; Mr." Chilling; Nancy
(probably the first gangster's Moll
in fction); Monks (born gentle
man, but the real villain of the
tale, with his monstrous plan to
bring his half-brother to the gal
loWs); and the Jew, Fagin.
All these gentry except Fagln
are Anglo-SaxonS, and through
them Dickens set out to present,
with his consummate gift for Carl
cature, a picture of the seamy side
of England in the middle OF the
last century. One Jew among so
many rascals would seem about
proportionate.
It does not seem good idea
that any group should assume
that it is altogether sinless, or that
fiction may draw no villains from
its ranks, or that in so doing a
whole people are impugned. None
of this corresponds to reality. In
real life vice and virtue are fairly
equally distributed among all races
and classes of men.
(Released by the Bell Syndicate, 1nc)