Question

Who was Mr Bumble?

Answer 1

Hint: The above question is from the novel ‘Oliver Twist’, written by Charles Dickens. The novel depicts the journey of the titular character, Oliver Twist. The main theme in "Oliver Twist" is the age-old war between good and evil.

Complete answer:
Oliver, an orphan since birth, spends much of his childhood at a “child farm” (orphanage) with too many children and too little food. The farm is located roughly 70 miles outside London. He is being born in a workhouse and sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker.

Mr Bumble was the cruel, tall, fat, pompous owner of the poorhouse or orphanage where the orphaned Oliver is raised.

As parish beadle, Mr Bumble acts as a contract between the church, the workhouse, the baby farm, and different associations for caring for the poor of the parish. He sees himself as significant and influential and disdains any scrutinizing of his position. Eventually, he gets his proper recompense in his marriage and resulting fall from power. Dickens utilizes Mr Blunder to outline the insufficiency of the helpless laws and the false reverence of the individuals who "care for" poor people, regularly speaking for him that feature the disregard intrinsic in this "care."

After escaping from the orphanage, Oliver travels to London, where he meets the "Artful Dodger", a gang member of juvenile pickpockets controlled by the elderly criminal Fagin. Even though Oliver is fundamentally righteous, the social environment in which he is raised encourages him to thievery and prostitution. Oliver struggles to find his identity and rise above the abject situations of the poor class people.

The narrator also comments on the characters, often by creating verbal irony. The major themes the text explores are virtue versus evil, poverty, criminality, child abuse, nature versus nurture, love and marriage, hypocrisy, and greed.

Note: Through this novel, Dickens wanted to show criminals as they were and to reveal all the horrors and violence that hid in the narrow, dirty backstreets of London. The main symbols in the novel are:
i) Darkness - associated with crime and evildoing.
ii) Countryside - a place of health, happiness, and security.
iii) Obesity - membership in the prosperous middle class, indicating a condition in which people have more than enough.
iv) Dirt and Dilapidation - represent poverty and criminality.