Human nature is something that is in people’s blood, and is impossible to be changed by the external environment. Usually, people’s human nature has a significant influence on their destiny and somehow dominates all their behaviors. It’s also being shown in the Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist, in which each character with different born human nature, has their own destiny. Even though Dickens mainly attributes the characters fate to their social environments and circumstances rather than their inherently good or bad, while some characters display their traits as a hint and how it affects their fate. This makes every character have their own track of life due to the diversity of human nature and how human nature led people to adapt to their surroundings.
Oliver, as the main character, obviously he’s being the protagonist and is representing the positive side in the harsh condition of consistently showing kindness and honesty, also innocence all the time, never being influenced by others. Oliver is always being kind and innocent that permeated into every behavior and situation he faced, even though his life never seemed good for growth. Oliver's reaction of “‘I have seen the gentleman,’ replied Oliver, scarcely able to articulate, ‘the gentleman who was so good to me—Mr. Brownlow, that we have so often talked about’”, shows his strong emotion of seeing Mr. Brownlow again. (Dickens ch41) Oliver insisted on being kind and honest to everyone around him, especially people who treated him well. He remembered it for a long time. When he sees Mr. Brownlow again, he urgently wants to prove to Mr. Brownlow that he wasn’t a thief. Even though people around him are gainful and selfish, he's still treating others quite sincerely, not being influenced by the don’t go along with the world, maintaining to do the right thing throughout his life, which shows that his born human nature is kind and honest, and is innocent in all those illegal gangs and rough destiny. Oliver’s good faith toward everyone around him provides him opportunities to get rid of the growth environment and go back to his original social status, changing his destiny.
Different from Oliver’s kind and vulnerable personality, the other character, who is Monks, is having a jealous and deep-seated hatred toward people, especially toward Oliver. Monks is the half-blooded brother of Oliver, who wants Oliver’s identity to be unknown, always tries to ruin Oliver’s life, which is fully implied in his malice of Oliver. Monks desperately hope the real birth of Oliver being destroyed that he finds the matron to get his mother’s remains and he “drew the little packet from his breast, ..., dropped it into the stream. It fell straight, and true as a die; clove the water with a scarcely audible splash; and was gone.” (Dickens ch38) As soon as Monks has the opportunity to have contact with those who “take care” of Oliver before, such as Mr. Bumble, he is eager to get all the information that represents Oliver’s real identity. His jealousy and hatred to Oliver is unabashed, and he spend his life with the company of criminals, even though he’s social well-respected and had a lot of inheritance, also Mr. Brownlow treats him with kindness, while he chooses to degrade his wealth and social class and finally dies in the prison, demonstrating his born criminality. Monks’s deep-rooted detestation of Oliver is only one of his behaviors of his jealous and slatternly attitude toward his life, that he knows he should not be like this from his family, but these are his “targets” for living.
Apart from bullying Oliver from a higher status like Monk, Noah Claypole, also as an apprentice himself, also taunts Oliver since he’s innate cruel but timid at the same time. Noah’s bully behavior and cruelty has lasts in his whole life, which could be deeply influenced by the social environment, but is also because of his own nature of being on the negative side. Noah didn’t bullied Oliver physically, but he verbally aggressive Oliver’s mother: “And it’s a great deal better, Work’us, that she died when she did, or else she’d have been hard labouring in Bridewell, or transported, or hung; which is more likely than either, isn’t it?” (Dickens ch6) Noah Claypole has the same status as Oliver Twist, which is an apprentice, whereas his personality is totally different from Oliver. He’s always saying that if Oliver’s mom hadn’t died, she would likely be in prison or hanged as a criminal, which indicates that Noah is a typical example of people who fully accept the link of poverty is criminal during the Victorian Era. However, he only emerges his cruelty to Oliver since Oliver is the only who won’t make himself getting into trouble, while the only “good” thing is that he did verbal aggression only. Therefore, Noah Claypole showed human nature deeply influenced by the prevailing social atmosphere at that time, and this had affected his destiny.
All in all, each character has their own unique identity that the author depicts to make all the characters closer to reality, making the characters vivid to better reflect the historical context of the novel and time period. People’s born human nature is different, it’s rarely influenced by the grown up environment, which is usually unchanged and decides people’s destiny. Dickens seems to try to convey the idea about comes around goes around, that Oliver gets adopted by Mr. Brownlow since he sticks to his principle, while Monk died in prison since he did illegal things secretly due to his jealousy. Their born human nature has helped them with their decision of their fate, which they may or may not have recognized, presenting an important role in people’s destiny.
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