Fagin The Jew
Fagin the Jew from Oliver Twist
Sensitivity and Sensibility in Writing.
What is writing really about?
On Friday night I went to watch my niece perform in a show. During the interval I saw a man who looked like Fagin from Oliver Twist. Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress has long been one of my favourite books, certainly my favourite Charles Dickens novel. Indeed, whilst writing my first novel, Buried at Bedlam: After The Black, The Protagonist (Robert Knox) is drawn to London where he becomes trapped in conspiracies, death and delusion, and much of this book’s London is built on the imagery of 18th & 19th century London which Charles Dickens captured in his works, such as poor social conditions. In this way, Oliver Twist or The Parish Boy’s Progress influenced Buried at Bedlam: After The Black. William Hogarth’s paintings, such as Rake’s Progress also helped me visualise the London I portray in this book.
With the topic of Copyright and Intellectual Property theft on my mind, I posted a picture of Fagin and his gang of thieves, misspelt most of the post and rushed back in to see the second half of the show. It wasn’t till the next day, whilst re-reading the post, that I recalled that in Oliver Twist Dickens called Fagin, Fagin the Jew, and this has long been debated as antisemitism, although Charles Dickens stated that he meant no imputation towards Jewish people.
In this modern world, when the streets of the UK are rioting and IP theft is commonplace, and with the wars in Israel, I realised that lines could be drawn and misconstrued with this post, as one of the thieves of my work is Jewish.
I would like to state that I meant absolutely no parallel to the stereotype of Jewish people being thieves and this one man in question, who is just one of a bad bunch of thieves, who are not Jewish. The streets of the UK are already burning with mobs doing Nazi salutes, and innocent little girls being attacked. I do not wish to pour more fuel on that fire.
I promptly removed the post. I guess its playing on my mind because I am embroiled in what is shaping up to be long, arduous and expensive litigations, similar to those I’ve been fighting the MOD for, for many years. Additionally, I know how rats try to evade prosecution by diverting attention away from their theft and they are already claiming that I’m threatening them and are already threatening me with legal action, for calling them out on their systematic organised crimes.
So yeah, I didn’t mean Fagin the Jew was a thieve because he is Jewish. And I didn’t mean that one of the main conspirators of IP theft and Copyright infringement of my work did it because he is a Jew. I can’t speak for Charles Dickens, but he claimed that he meant no attack or ill will towards Jewish people.
But this post, this “unthinken moment” as my Corporal use to call it- back when I was a 16-year-old child soldier- is topical because it raises many questions of sensitivity and sensibility in writing. One’s argument against Dickens might be that simply by referring to this nasty, thieving, child exploiting antagonist as Fagin the Jew, he has made a parallel with Jew being the antagonist.
A counter might be that Dickens wanted to fully capture the anti-Jewish sentiment of the time. This was a time of great upheaval and extremely poor social conditions, many wars and social unrest- very much like today’s London. Oliver Twist was written in 1838. Pogroms in Palestine - before the creation of the state of Israel- and other pogroms in the east had driven many Jewish people to London to seek asylum and refuge. Fagin embodies the stereotypes of Jewish people: “immoral, miserly, and disgusting to look at”, hook nose, thief, cunning, pickpocket, cheat, and so on.
The problem is, perhaps, Dickens really didn't give Fagin any redeeming qualities. In the novel Fagin is a nasty, unscrupulous greedy Jew and then he is sentenced to be hanged. The ark, for Fagin, is seemingly just deserves. He begins as a stereotypical thieving nasty Jew, and he ends as the same stereotypical thieving nasty Jew sentenced for complicity in the murder of Nancy, a caring, young woman harbouring motherly affection towards young Oliver. Oliver’s unmarried mother died during childbirth, another of the social injustices of this period.
Thus it is clear that Charles Dickens was depicting the problems he saw in London. His mistake is the same mistake the world has witnessed since antiquity. His words seem to place blame on a behaviour of a people for the behaviour of the individual. My opinion is that Dickens was a man of his time, just trying to portray his concerns, but concerns and fears never bow well as they seep into the past as language and sentiments change.
In Chuck Palahniuk’s 2020 writing guide / memoir and insight book, Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different, Chuck writes, “As a writer your job isn’t to resolve an issue, but you can depict the situation and make use of the natural tensions a topic carries.”
I like to believe that this was Dickens’s aim with Fagin the Jew and not to have a stab at Jewish people.
*Plug for Chuck- If you are a writer, or a fan of Chuck’s work, you really need to read his writing guide. Its brilliant and insightful. *
Also, go to my blog and check out the Flash fiction story, Do Your Homework Vivi. I thought I’d give Chuck’s beatnik transgressive style ago, in keeping with his hilarious Hindsight Story Nights. The story is revolting and ungodly. Don’t read if your gonna moan about it! https://www.mwwolf-fiction.co.uk/mw-wolfs-blog/do-your-homework-vivi
Whilst I was reading Chuck’s writing guide, I was writing The Ballad of Wuthering Descent. The Ballad is a transgressive, dark comedy (Juvenalian satire) with psychological thriller/ horror elements. I tried implementing and experimenting with the teachings from Chuck’s writing guide. The deuteragonist of The Ballad of Wuthering Descent is Jada- A transgender black woman of poetic sensibility and amazing legs. She tries to help the Protagonist Edgar Heathcliff. In this book I explore many topics of “todays anxieties.” Namely, suffering, loss, grief, trauma, loneliness, marginalization, gender, sexuality, the hoods, family court corruption, domestic abuse, mental illness, cathartic use of violence, the use of drugs, alcohol and sex to mask suffering. This book is about the masks we wear, the masks we all hide behind!
In fact, in all my books I’m “implicitly examining the human condition”, so much so that its almost a slogan of the M.W. Wolf Fictional Megaverse.
Thus I wanted to address the post of “Fagin the Jew” and state that I meant no antisemitic sentiment towards anyone and that the fact that one of the many thieves of my work is Jewish, is merely a coincidence. I’ve been to the Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz and Birkenau, and to Bergen-Belsen near Celle where I was based in a former SS camp with tunnels and railways underground, and torture chambers and gas chambers under the officer’s mess. I’ve studied much of WW2, and I’ve taught topics of war and conflict, conformity and obedience, power and control. I regard WW2 as a heroic and glorious fight back against fascism. WW2 may have been the last justified and legal war the UK has been involved in. But that’s another story.
So was Charles Dickens right in the way he portrayed Fagin the Jew in Oliver Twist? Certainly not by todays standards, but he has raised the question of using stereotypes in characters. And this does open the questions of “Sensitivity and Sensibility in Writing.”
I’ve used stereotypes, we all have. Stereotypes are not wholly bad or negative. Take the stereotype of the big bad wolf in the woods? It may be safer for children to believe that all wolves are big and bad. What about all women are nurturing? Not if you happen across Rose West driving by on a country lane in the 1980s. Say no to strangers, say no no no no no. Do you remember that campaign from Primary School? Well that’s a stereotype worth paying attention to if you’re a child. What about the stereotype that Literary Agents care about aspiring writers? Eh… No. Check out my blogs, you’ll see the filth I’m having to deal with. Stereotypes should be explored and played around with in writing. So long as they are done with sensitivity and sensibility in mind, and done for a purpose, which is not to cause harm to a population nor a people nor an individual.
So don’t misrepresent my post and do use stereotypes to play with and draw attention to today’s social anxieties, but be curious, courteous and understanding and sensitive in your approach.
Take a look at some of the themes, fears, concerns and anxieties of the human condition being explored in my novels.
Titles
About
Buried at Bedlam: After the Black
Slave Trade, Mental Illness, its treatments, the vices we use to mask it, and the mistreatment of the vulnerable and impoverished, and the control of the duality of good & evil inside us all.
Bloodborg: The Harvest
AI, technological advancements, war and conflict, diversity, power and control, culture of self-interest, blood farming, oppression, human transcendence, fears of cybernetics, the pursuit of perfection and immortality, The brake down of order, selfishness, ext.
Six Dead Orphans (Short Story)
Climate change and fracking whilst exploring the vulnerability of girls, if authority were to break down.
Our Fathers
Fatherhood- Child abuse, drugs, human trafficking, prostitution, mental illness caused by trauma, crimes, and murder.
The Shameful Kiss
Murder, trauma and radicalisation.
False Alligators & Wind-up Dolls (satire)
Family court corruption, gender wars, parenthood, and domestic abuse.
Mississippi Sleepers: A Woman Reborn
The ill treatment of veterans, Government (CIA's) unaccountability, human experimentation, mind control, proxy wars and wider geopolitical happenings.
Carniphobia: The Wandering (Composite Novel)
A composite of short stories, written in different sub-genres of horror, connected to social issues, worries and fears. The stories link up to terrifying reads over each novel and a meta-story across the events of three novels.
The Ballad of Wuthering Descent
Suffering, loss, grief, trauma, loneliness, marginalization, sexuality, the hoods, Family court corruption, domestic abuse, mental illness, cathartic use of violence. The use of drugs, alcohol and sex to mask suffering. This book is about the masks we wear, the masks we all hide behind!
Lang The Orangutan
Separation Anxiety from parents.
Bee My Agent; Blood and Honey
Theft of IP in the Literary and film industries- undertone of Horatian Satire, aiming at the literary industry and my fears of where it is heading, given the SAG-AFTRA strikes and AI taking over.
The feelings and fears of being a writer, trying to make it in the publishing world. It’s about obsession, rejection, power dynamics of agent and writer, childhood trauma and its lasting effects.
The Fateless Child: Tainted Blood
The aftereffects of nuclear war, Globalization, global dominance and control, privatization, disinformation, conspiracies, psychological warfare and geopolitical happenings. Overarching, the series is a metaphor for humanities thirst for war and conflict and our struggles to control the dark duality inside us all.
God’s Masterful Evasion & The Inverted Organelle Theory of Consciousness and The Universe (IO-CU). The Theory of Everything
This is Scientific nonfiction, The IO-CU and TOE. But it has an anti-war undertone and sentiment exploring human thirst for war and the duality of good and evil inside us all.
https://www.mwwolf-fiction.co.uk/
Chronicles of The Megaverse
Blog Page
Aim 1, Chronicles of the Megaverse is the blog page of M.W. Wolf Ltd’s Megaverse of Fiction. Here we comment on, promote, discuss, and review books and updates of the M.W. Wolf catalogue of fiction. We’re aiming to grow into a storytelling brand spanning many different mediums and genres. We’ll be rewarding our Wolf Pack of readers and followers as we grow.
Aim 2, We’ll also cover topics of literature, writing, books, genres, Ai’s influence on the book and publishing industry, and the future of the literary industry.
Aim 3, The M.W. Wolf Megaverse is underpinned by the IO-CU; thus we’ll occasionally dip our toes into the world of science, consciousness and the universe.
M.W. Wolf Ltd.
