Analysis of Dickens' Critique and Humanity Spirit in Oliver Twist Based on the Appraisal Theory

As the greatest representative of English critical realism, Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist reflects the complex social reality in his time and manifests the author’s humanity spirit especially to the poor and the lower class. The paper uses the attitude sub-system in appraisal theory as analytical framework, chooses the attitude resources related to the protagonist Oliver as research material, mainly analyzes his personality characteristics at lexical level. The study aims to reveal the author’s humanity spirit that lurked in the discourse after construing Oliver’s image in that social background and his critique spirit to the society, in the hope of deepening our understanding of the significance of the theme of the novel, and providing a linguistic reference for the appreciation of literature work. At the same time, this study further confirms the value of appraisal theory in discourse analysis and appreciation