Oliver Twist (version 4) by Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)

Chapter 39

·29 min·2 clips

Nancy says, 'At last!' as Sikes falls under the sleeping draught and she rushes out alone.

1. Chapter XXXIX of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens centers on Nancy, Bill Sikes, Fagin, and Monks in London. 2. Charles Dickens frames the chapter with Sikes’s illness, Nancy’s watchfulness, and Fagin’s role as the broker of money and messages. 3. The chapter asks what Nancy will do after seeing Sikes, Fagin, and Monks move money and secrets through the same rooms. 4. Sikes wakes in a mean, badly furnished room and complains that he feels “as weak as water.” 5. Nancy, pale from “watching and privation,” patches an old waistcoat while she nurses Sikes and answers his curses. 6. Fagin arrives with the Artful Dodger, Charley Bates, and a bundle of food, spirits, pie, sugar, cheese, and wine. 7. The boys use bellows and spirits to revive Nancy after she faints, while Sykes insults her and demands blunt. 8. Fagin bargains with Sykes and reduces the requested advance from five pounds to three pounds, four and sixpence. 9. Nancy goes with Sikes back toward his lodging, while Fagin returns home with the boys and the remaining eatables. 10. At Fagin’s house, Toby Crackit is playing cribbage with Mr. Chitling, and Chitling loses his fifteenth and last sixpence. 11. The chapter becomes more tense when Monks arrives, asks Fagin for a private word, and goes upstairs with him. 12. Nancy hears the men’s steps, slips quietly upstairs herself, and returns before they come back down. 13. Fagin hands Nancy the money after Monks leaves, and she leaves the house looking pale and disturbed. 14. Nancy runs through London from Spitalfields toward the west end, and the clock strikes ten as she hurries past crowds. 15. She reaches a family hotel near Hyde Park at eleven, where a porter, waiter, and housemaids question her sharply. 16. Nancy insists on seeing Miss Miley and says she must deliver a message, even while the servants call her a disgrace to her sex. 17. Dickens keeps the tone nervous and theatrical, with rapid movement, repeated dialogue, and sharp social contrasts. 18. The narration alternates between rough comic exchanges in the slum rooms and urgent physical action in the streets. 19. Readers who want Dickens, danger, and secret errands in London. 20. Readers who prefer tidy plots with little slang or suspense.

As heard by us

Nancy's urgent errand gives Dickens's shabby criminal world a sudden, quietly gripping focus.

Chapter XXXIX turns underworld business into a slow study in degradation. William Sykes wakes in a mean, badly furnished room, accepts that the payment may leave him only eighteen pounds, and lets the evening sink into Fagin's circle.

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Why you'd press play

You want a shabby room, fifteen lost sixpences, and Nancy arriving with a message she refuses to leave unheard.

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