This was a hefty tome. Not as long as David Copperfield or Bleak House  or Little Dorrit, but still ponderous. It was not a bildingsroman like David Copperfield; Oliver is just a child from beginning to end.  

The book starts off with the famous scene in which Oliver gets punished for asking for more porridge at the orphanage where all the orphans are mal-nutritioned and had voted for Oliver to be the one who asks for more food. Eventually, the institute sells him to a coffin maker whose household bullies and starves him until he runs away. He is picked up off the street by the Artful Dodger, a pick pocket who introduces him to a life of crime and brings him into the underworld that's peopled with prostitutes and thieves and villains.  Nancy the prostitute, Bill Sykes the murderer,  Fagan the sinister jew, Bates and the already mentioned Artful Dodger. They stand as the lower rungs  of society. Luckily, fate would have it two times Oliver becomes terminally ill and is nursed back to health. After the last of these illnesses, he becomes a gentleman upon his adoption by a sweet young lady and her adopted mother.  As typical Dickens, the multitudunous plots and characters come together at the end.