Throughout Dickens's novel, Oliver Twist, Dickens speaks about the rising or ascension of morally good characters. Oliver Twist is born an orphan who is raised by the parish as underfed, unloved and overworked. He leaves this life and goes to London where he gets kidnapped by a group of thieves while he is staying at a nice man's house. When Oliver was forced to do a malicious act, he was wounded and taken in by the Maylies. All the thieves become arrested or scattered away, while Oliver finds out that he is entitled to the fortune of the Maylies and that they are his real family. In Charles Dickens's novel, Oliver Twist, the eventual rising of the good characters is made evident through the use of setting, the use of characterization, and the use of themes.

             The use of setting that Dickens employs articulates the fact that Oliver has been torn between two worlds throughout the book. Oliver notices that the good lived in a different type of area than the poor, but not in all cases. One world that Oliver experienced when he was young had been what he described, "the filthy slums of London." Oliver realized that he was in a world of crime when he was a part of Fagin, Sikes, and their gang. Things would happen there at night, in the dark alleys and in the abandoned, unlighted buildings. It was said that, "such darkness suggests that evil dominates the world." Oliver had lived in a world of poverty for some years with the parish, Mr. Sowerberry, and Mr. Bumble; and realized that the good do not exist.

             Another world that Oliver experienced was definitely a contrast to Fagin's London. This was the good side of life, at the Maylies' cottage or the "handsome Library" of Brownlow. Maylies' cottage was described as having "sunlit days and fragrant flowers." As Oliver went on through life, he realized that the morally good people had lived here in the more up-scale environment. Unlike the scrupulously wrong thieves from the slum, these people are morally correct.