In English novels, Jewish characters have regularly been portrayed as greedy, nitpicking, and miserly misers. They are usually, but not always, dealers, money lenders or note brokers. Shylock from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Isaac from Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, and Fagin from Oliver Twist, among other Jewish characters, are the best known. examples of such racial and cultural stereotypes. Oliver Twist is the second novel by Charles Dickens and was first published as a serial 1837-9. Through the astute depiction of the difficult life of the orphan Oliver Twist, Dickens reflects the reality of the huge lower-class poor population at that time. And the novel's villainous character, Fagin, and his Jewish identity have always been controversial among readers of all cultures and generations. In this essay I will discuss anti-Semitism in Oliver Twist as it is personified in Fagin. I will present the difference in attitude towards Jews as seen in Fagin through the comparison between Dickens' original novel and other later adapted versions, particularly David Lean's 1948 film adaptation and the film adaptation by Roman Polanski from 2005. I will also demonstrate the causes as well as the consequences of the different stages of the attitude towards the Jews in these versions of Oliver Twist made over three different periods. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Dickens's The Archetypal Jew, Lauriat Lane makes several arguments. First, he claims that Dickens follows the "anti-Semitic tradition of English literature" in creating the villainous character Oliver Twist: Fagin as a Jew (94 Lane). However, Lane also asserts that Dickens is "by no means exempt from the general attitude and prejudices of his time" (95). Lane asserts that Dickens's Jewish character is grounded in reality. It is certain that what he mentioned in the preface to Oliver Twist, Dickens aims to make the novel realistic – "to bring together the accomplices of the crime who really existed...to show them as they really were" () . Despite Dickens' realist lens, Lane denies Fagin's character as a purely realistic study of Jewishness. The evidence presented by Lane is a letter Dickens wrote to Mrs. Eliza Davis, of Fagin, "that this class of criminals was almost invariably Jewish" (94). Also, “a few passages from another letter by Dickens reflect the same prejudice. On September 12, 1843, he wrote to Thomas Hood that a Mr. Colburn had taken advantage of your temporary situation for "money lending, bill brokering, Jewish clothing bagging, Saturday night pawnbroking." (95). All this suggests that not only does Dickens follow the anti-Semitic tradition in his writings, but he also upholds a firm stereotypical attitude towards Jews in reality. However, Dickens, in his time, was not the only anti-Semite in reality. Historically, anti-Semitism is a racial prejudice that has existed for a long time, both in literature and in reality. In order to better understand the meaning and causes of anti-Semitism, it is necessary to grasp its opposite, the meaning of Semitism, or a more appropriate meaning. The word would be philosemitism or Judeophilia, both words refer to people with "interest, respect and appreciation for the Jewish people, historical significance and the positive impacts of Judaism on the world, especially from a nice one.” »[]. However, this ideological stereotype, as the French Jewish literary critic Bernard Lazare assertsconvincingly in the preface to his book Anti-Semitism: its history and its causes, “was not born without a cause” (5 Lazarus). He noticed that wherever Jews settle, anti-Semitism grows. Also note that he contests the word anti-Semitism to describe this certain attitude towards Jews. He claims he prefers to call it anti-Judaism, which is a more accurate term. Various points of view have been put forward to explain the cause of anti-Semitism. The religious theory of ancient times is that, from the Christian perspective, the Jews are the "killers" of Jesus, the ancestors of Jesus; from the point of view of Judaism, they arrogantly declare themselves to possess the mentality of a chosen people. The racial theory propagated by the Nazis was that Jews were considered an inferior race. Conspiracy theory claims that Jews are hated because they are the cause of most of the world's problems – Adolf Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as part of a Jewish conspiracy. In the original novel, Fagin is described as "a very old, wizened Jew, whose wicked and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair" (63; ch.8). Such a seemingly stereotypical description of Jewishness by Dickens was not personal. In Victorian Britain, anti-Semitism was seen as a social convention – Oliver Twist was born of a “predominantly anti-Semitic” era and literary tradition (Stone 225). As Harry Stone has suggested, Dickens “exhibited anti-Semitism and this anti-Semitism was typical of his time” (225). Laws, parliamentary debates, newspapers, magazines, songs and plays, as well as novels, reflect the latent anti-Semitism that was part of the Victorian heritage. In 1830, a Jew could not open a store in the City of London, be called to the bar, receive a university degree, or sit in Parliament... In 1830, the majority of England's twenty to thirty thousand Jews earned their living by buying and selling clothes. , hawking and money lending. Fictional portraits of Jewish cloth merchants staggering under enormous sacks of rags, bearded peddlers haggling with country women, and miserly moneylenders gloating over their secret treasures were brought to life not only by a long literary tradition, but also by intermittent testimonies from the streets of London. (225) Another factor that contributes to the anti-Semitism of the Victorian era as depicted in Oliver Twist is Dickens's Christianity. Susan Mayer argues in Antisemitism and Social Critique in Dickens's Oliver Twist that Dickens "invokes Christianity" as the moral center in Oliver Twist (239 Mayer). Various discussions of Dickens's Christianity are used as evidence: writing in 1962, John Gross, noting Dickens's interest in redemption and resurrection, commented that Dickens's Christianity "is more relevant than we tend to think." think these days” (xii). Twenty years later, Andrew Sanders again noted that the combination of "a sincere but fairly simple faith with a general refusal to proclaim it from the housetops...[made] Dickens's insistent Christianity...irrelevant for modern critical discussions of his work. (Resurrection xi) Mayer also asserts that, in Oliver Twist, Dickens "insistently criticizes what he regards as anti-Christian in the behavior of the English towards the poor" (241 Mayer). “In the novel's opening chapters, set in the unnamed town where Oliver was born, criticize those who created the new poor laws and those who justify, administer, and benefit from them, as well as any indifferent spectatorswho benefit from these laws. , or do not contribute to remedying the situation of the poor” (241-245). Mayer sees these flaws in individual and institutional morality as “the failure of Christianity” (242). The 1948 film adaptation of Lean follows George Cruikshank's illustration: in the film adaptation, Fagin played by Alec Guinness, has a repulsive look with a huge hooked nose, chipped teeth, shaggy eyebrows and matted hair, who represent the conventional Jewish racial stereotype at the time. time. This anti-Semitic image also sparked protests from New World Jewish opponents of the European continent. Regarding the 1948 film adaptation with the historical context of the time, Liora Brosh gave context for understanding Lean's cinematic portrayal of Fagin and the audience's perspective (especially Jewish protests): Unlike the novel, Lean's idea is less about the private domestic sphere than about collective British identity. … Lean's Oliver Twist is obsessed with these characters who overturn national boundaries. Fagin and the prostitute Nancy are presented as unreliable and unreliable British people. … Although Lean would have trusted Cruikshank with his film, contrary to the illustrations, Fagin is neither short nor lanky. …In the illustration drawn by Cruikshank for the novel, Fagin is thinner, shorter, and smaller than any other adult character, especially Sikes. …This film was made when World War II was a recent and vivid memory, the British Empire was disintegrating, and Jews were fighting the British to establish their independent Jewish state. …These new historical contexts changed the conventional trope of the cowardly feminized Jew depicted in Dickens. (Brosh 94-95) As Brosh and other sources have explained, the anti-Semitic portrayal of Fagin in Lean's 1948 film adaptation presents itself as political propaganda intended to serve diplomatic demand - Zionism emerged at the end of the 19th century. “After the death of the son of the moderate pro-British Zionist leader, also due to anti-Zionist policies in Britain, the leadership of the Zionist movement passed to the Jewish agency headed by the anti-British socialist party” (125- 135 Cohen). In an effort to win independence for the Jewish state in Palestine, Zionists waged guerrilla warfare against Britain. Like the 1948 film adaptation, several subsequent adaptations of Oliver Twist have also been widely criticized. At the London stage premiere of Lionel Bart's musical adaptation in 1960, Fagin played by actor Ron Moody was criticized for his "stereotypical nasal infection and singing songs in the style of Jewish folk music" (Gross). To avoid the controversy generated by these earlier adaptations, Carol Reed's 1968 film version made some adjustments: "instead, it played with gay stereotypes, working its way through 'Pick a Pocket or Two' and twirling a frilly pink parasol. in 'I'll do anything'” (Gross). Unlike Lean's 1948 film adaptation and other previous versions of Oliver Twist, Roman Polanski takes an obviously different approach in directing his 2005 film adaptation of Oliver Twist. His idea of ​​approaching the character of Fagin was revealed in a telephone interview where he said: "We've lived long enough to know that certain things have to be done for certain reasons. Without analyzing it. Which would be embarrassing, you know?" (Raw). When it comes to Fagin, Polanski has completely abandoned the anti-Semitic characterizations.