Headscratchers / Oliver!

• A lyric in the song "Who Will Buy?":
  
  There'll never be a day so sunny —
  It could not happen twice.
  Where is the man we owe the money?
  It's cheap at half the price!
  
  ** Isn't anything cheap at half the price? Don't they mean "it's cheap at twice the price"?
  • No. They mean "it's cheap at half the price". What they're essentially saying is that it's cheap because it's at half-price, therefore it's the perfect time to buy it. It's like a "limited offer" type thing nowadays; it's basically stating that it's a great deal so it shouldn't be wasted. (Also, the lyric is "where is the man with all the money").
• We see Fagin and Dodger go off into the sunrise toward the end of the film. What happens to Fagin's other boys?
  • Maybe they turn honest and leave London. They may get work on a farm.
  • Maybe Oliver was feeling public-spirited and got Mr Brownlow to arrange for them all to be adopted.
  • In the book, a few die, others are arrested, Dodger’s best friend, Charley, gets an honest job as a farmer’s lad, but the others weren’t so lucky.
  • I assumed that once Fagin and Dodger found a new place, they went back for the rest of the boys.

• After Fagin and boys escape from the law, why didn't they just go back to their hideout? It's not like the police were looking for them. Only Bill Sykes, who had already been shot.
  • The children probably wouldn't know this. And I think they're afraid Oliver would inform on them, so they scatter and take their chances elsewhere.

• During the scene in which Sykes beats Nancy to death, Nancy is screaming and Brownlow clearly hears something. You'd think he'd walk down to see what was happening
  • Maybe he thought that Sikes would do worse to him, for working with Nancy
  • He does. He's stood in the middle of the bridge when he hears the screams so he's got to get across to the end and down several dozen steps to reach them. Plus he's quite an old man. As it is, he reaches Nancy seconds after Bill gets away with Oliver. It's likely that he heard the screams, saw enough to determine that something was seriously wrong and then started heading over.

• During the WHO WILL BUY segment, there was a man selling sarsaparilla. Did sarsaparilla exist in the 1830s?
  • It is possible. We know that Baldwin's has produced a sarsaparilla cordial continuously since the 1840s, so it is possible that it existed prior to that in other manufacturers who have not survived into the present. It was a popular drink with the Temperance movement, particularly in the North of England, so it is not outwith the realm of possibility.

• Why on earth would Fagin send Oliver out on the "job" the next day after he arrived? He should've known Oliver wouldn't be ready for that yet and would require more training.
  • In the original story Oliver stays with Fagin for the first few days up to about a week to get more training. I suppose they just wanted to speed things up in the movie.
  • As well as the above explanation, there's also quite a heavy implication that Oliver wasn't actually supposed to see the realities of what the "job" truly consisted of on that first outing. Dodger and Charley spot Mr Brownlow as a potential mark and then check to see if Oliver's paying attention, only moving in when they see that he isn't. It's only because they miss the first opportunity to get Brownlow's wallet that Oliver notices what they're doing and goes over in time to see them get the wallet. It's possible that Fagin was thinking Oliver's first day out would have consisted of Dodger and Charley doing all the work while they keep Oliver distracted by other things and maybe train him at odd intervals using themselves and the things they had taken that day as the stand-ins for the marks. It's also implied that it's only Oliver actively asking to go and pressing the issue that caused Fagin to allow it so soon in the first place - the man was somewhat distracted at the time and possibly just couldn't think of a reasonable excuse why Oliver shouldn't be allowed to go at the moment he brought it up, especially if he was to be in the company of Dodger and Charley (who are implied to be the two best thieves in the group) and thus relatively safe. If that was the case, it would also explain why he's so upset at Dodger for letting Oliver get caught.

• why was there an owl at Fagin's hideout? Was it is pet?

• Bill Sykes was implied to be one of Fagin's students at one time. Is the reason he's always angry and violent because of the pent-up frustration he had with his life? Was it because he was deep down angry at Fagin for leading him to where he is now?
  • Possibly, but I think it has more to do with Bill probably having a tough childhood. We know nothing about his history except that he had associated with Fagin for a long time. Maybe he had abusive parents. Many people who are abusers were victims of abuse as children themselves. It turns into a cycle.
  • That's all sort of reading too much into it. Bill Sikes lived his entire life with an understanding that crime pays and one thing simply led to another. He started out as a pickpocket, then pickpocketing turned to mugging, which grew to house burglary, and through it all he cultivated a reputation and image as a violent criminal because there was simply no reason for him to become anything else, especially not when the added threat of violence makes it all the more likely that people will give you whatever you want from them without putting up much of an argument. It's made clearer in the book where Fagin and the boys aren't nearly as nice as they are in the musical, but Bill Sikes is basically there to show that he's what lies at the end of the criminal pipeline that the Artful Dodger and all the rest of the boys have entered into, in no small part because Fagin has effectively convinced them all that someone like Sikes is someone to emulate because he's able to get whatever he wants from people one way or another, and that the boys will never be allowed to "go straight" because society won't let them (which is what Fagin alludes to in 'Reviewing The Situation') so they may as well learn how to just get as much stuff as they can, and to demonstrate what they all (including Oliver) could potentially grow up to become if no law-abiding citizen were to step in and actually help them turn their lives around in the manner that Oliver (and Charley Bates in the novel) are ultimately able to.

• Why did Fagin only seem to take in boys?
  • Nancy mentions that she thieved for Fagin when she was a kid. It is implied that her friend Bet (the woman who joins her during the "I'd Do Anything" segment)might have as well. Fagin seems to have more boys than girls, but I would say that Fagin seems to be more partial to boys as he probably thinks they're better at committing crimes. It is the 1800s and was more male-dominated back then.
  • It's not as though Fagin goes out on recruitment drives: if Oliver's recruitment is any judge, lost kids come to him, having heard of him through Dodger or other prior members of the gang. It stands to reason that destitute boys would be more inclined than destitute girls to put their trust in some stranger's advice of "hey, why not go live with this strange old guy who's got lots of us under his wing… there's a job we do for him, but never mind what, it's a good living, he's good to us". To a Victorian girl the offer would sound rather like a euphemism for something they'd rather not turn to, especially at their age.