All their pain... All at once... All for you...

What would you feel if you were a member of a minor ethnic group? What would you become when your ethnic group was considered a lesser one, whose members were supposedly notorious as trouble-makers and low-life criminals? What would you pay to rise in the society who despised your ethnic group? And what choice would you have left when all your efforts failed?

Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" was one of my favorite books. The realistic way Dickens described the 19th century morality and the negative excesses of industrial revolution, the strong characterization that supports the whole intriguing plot, the strong symbolism he used through the pages, those were some of the reasons. And when we talk about characterization, I have to admit that the character I like best in this story is Fagin, the Jewish mentor of the young criminals. I like his humorous wit and the way he saw the world as a self-proclaimed miser. I like him even better than that tricky and sly Shylock in Shakespeare's "The Merchant Of Venice".

One question kept bugging me, though. Why a Jew? I mean, Dickens could have been making him out of any other ethnic group, but he chose a Jew. Is there any particular reason? Did even the great Dickens fell victim to the prejudicial image of the Jewish people? I mean, he didn't even bother to explore the background of Fagin, despite the character's important role in the story. Did Dickens think that being a Jew is a background enough for Fagin's characters as a criminal? That being a Jew is reason enough to be a criminal?

Later I found out that Dickens didn't meant to make an anti-semitic characterization through Fagin. However, "Oliver Twist" helped stereotyping the Jewish people as greedy and tricky by nature. Something that I believe Dickens never intended to do, considering the fact that he was not anti-Semitic. When he was reminded of the fact that he had created this stereotyping, he tried to change it later and apologized profusely. In later editions of the book printed during his lifetime, Dickens excised many of the references to Fagin's Jewishness. In one of his final public readings in 1869, a year before his death, Dickens cleansed Fagin of stereotypical caricature. Later Dickens also created, in "Our Mutual Friend", the noble character of Riah, an elderly Jew who finds jobs for downcast young women in Jewish-owned factories ("I think there cannot be kinder people in the world," exclaims one of the girls). Despite these efforts, "Oliver Twist", which was originally a monthly serial in Bentley's Miscellany, a magazine for mature readers, had been transformed into a literature for children. In an introduction to a 1981 Bantam Books reissue of Oliver Twist, Irving Howe wrote that Fagin was considered an 'archetypal Jewish villain'. Considering literature's great role in a culture's continuation, you can imagine how many children who grew up thinking that all Jewish people are bad; children who later grew up and taught the same thing to their children.

Obviously Will Eisner also learned about that facts. And I think that's why he tried to give some more colors to one of Dickens greatest creations, Fagin, in his 2003 graphic novel "Fagin The Jew" (that, and the fact that Eisner himself had done some stereotyping in his stories, for example in "The Spirit" with the hero's young black side-kick, Ebony White). To Eisner, this graphic novel "Fagin The Jew" is a chance to fight the stereotyping of the Jew, without eliminating the fact that Fagin is a criminal. No, I believe he didn't try to make any justification of what Fagin did, especially when I consider the fact that Fagin was based on an actual Jewish criminal, Ikey Solomon. He simply wanted, in his own words, "to write a biography of Fagin, which needed to be done. I didn't alter the thrust of Fagin -- he was still a criminal, he still gets hanged at the end -- but the opportunity to show what his life was like gave me a chance to take an issue with it." In this graphic novel, the back story of the character and events of "Oliver Twist" are depicted from a Jew's point of view.

To me, although it was not done by the creator of Fagin himself, the biography of Fagin is more than passable. Mind you, this is not a retelling of Dickens' "Oliver Twist". It's something deeper than that. Much deeper.

Read it and you'll understand what I mean, especially when you read the about the later life of Dickens' titular character, Oliver Twist himself. As before, just right-click on the image below and select 'save as'.

Enjoy!