Stylistic device Similar to 'personification' but direct. The speaker addresses someone absent or dead, or addresses an inanimate or abstract object as if it were human. This is when the name of a character has a symbolic meaning. For example, in Dickens' "Great Expectations", Miss Havisham has a sham, or lives a life full of pretense. In Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", Rev. Dimmesdale metaphorically fades away (dims) as the novel progresses, while Chillingworth has a cold (chilled) heart. A symbol may be an object, a person, a situation, an action, a word, or an idea that has literal meaning in the story
Monks (Oliver Twist) to outwardly be associated with any form of crime (this is not because he is a moral being, but because he fears being caught). Dickens keeps his motives and his true identity a total secret until nearly the end of the novel, thus surprising the reader with an unexpected revelation that adds complications to the plot. Monks does not appear at all in "Oliver!", the musical adaptation of the novel, nor in several film versions of the novel which seek to simplify the story, including Roman Polanski's 2005 adaptation of "Oliver Twist". He does, however, appear in several mini-series versions