s Steven Marccus has said of Dickens, “confronted injustices so directly and without equivocation, that he was able to bring before a large and extremely partisan public on of the most sensitive problems of the time, the problem of the poor” (qtd. in Dunn 10). The book caused heightened awareness of the problems with the poor and the new poor laws. The story became more and more important as a severe winter hit. The cold forced food shortages and unemployment. Many felt themselves sinking into the grip of the new poor laws. (MacKenzie 56).Oliver Twist was greatly influenced by Dickens real life experiences of poverty and abandonment. The subject matter was the poor. He wrote of an orphan reflecting on the time he spent living alone working at Warren’s Blacking Factory. Dickens then created a story from this orphan to show his thoughts on the poor laws. Dickens believed the poor laws made victims of the poor, denied the poor voice, and needed to be changed. The poor laws had become the second most important thing in Dickens life, behind writing. Dickens combined his real life and his writing to create one of the greatest novels ever, Oliver Twist. ...
