130 pages 4 hours read

Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1838

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Chapters 51-53

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 51 Summary: “AFFORDING AN EXPLANATION OF MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, AND COMPREHENDING A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OF SETTLEMENT OR PIN-MONEY”

Oliver and his many guardians travel by coach to Oliver’s birthplace. Mr. Brownlow has told Oliver and the women about Monks’s confession. Oliver is now aware that his older half-brother has been plotting to keep their father’s will secret. Oliver keeps crying out and pointing out landmarks that he is familiar with. Oliver wants nothing more than to see his friend Dick again. He hopes that “we’ll take him away from here, and have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet country place where he may grow strong and well” (607). Rose agrees to this happily.

Oliver continues to point out different landmarks from his old life but he realizes that things have “somehow fallen off in grandeur and size” and that things are no long as big and scary as they had once been (608). The adults busy themselves with many things when they finally arrive at the hotel, but Rose and Oliver are kept out of the loop. This makes them “nervous and uncomfortable” and they sit together in uncertainty (609). That night however, everyone enters the room, and Mr. Brownlow brings along Monks, who turns out to be the man who accosted Oliver near the inn.