Oliver Twist The alternative title, "The Parish Boy's Progress", alludes to Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress", as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, "A Rake's Progress" and "A Harlot's Progress". In this early example of the social novel, Dickens satirises the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own youthful experiences
The Butcher Boy (novel) identity in the novel, explains that this style of writing forces the reader to "constantly [reassess] Francie Brady's psychological (in)stability [...] never quite sure to what extent Francie's perceptions are delusions or are incisive commentary on the narrow community in which he lives." Like many other contemporary and modern pieces of Irish literature, "The Butcher Boy" addresses concerns about Ireland's neocolonial status. As Shahriyar Mansouri claims, the novel also examines the rise of a new wave of "decolonizing anarchic formations" in Ireland in the late 1960s and the 1970s, identifying split identity and non-conformism as outcries of a nation colonized