Number one

Number one is a recurring philosophical maxim in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, articulated most explicitly by Fagin to his new recruit Noah Claypole. It encapsulates the principle of radical self-interest that governs the criminal underworld: every individual's primary duty is to look after himself, and all alliances are merely instruments for serving that single end. The phrase functions as a cynical counter-gospel to the novel's overt moral scheme, exposing the logic that binds Fagin's gang together even as it ultimately justifies betrayal and isolation.

Origin and Explicit Formulation

The maxim receives its fullest exposition when Fagin inducts Noah Claypole—who has adopted the alias Morris Bolter—into his gang. Fagin declares that "number one" is the only magic number that matters, dismissing both three and seven as mere superstition. He elaborates that within their "little community," each member must take care of "number one"—meaning himself—but that this self-interest paradoxically requires taking care of Fagin as well, since the old man's safety is essential to everyone else's. When Bolter objects that Fagin should be "number two," Fagin insists they are of equal importance to each other, and that the gallows is the common threat that makes their mutual dependence inescapable. This doctrine of enlightened self-interest is the gang's founding principle: "a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company."

The Principle in Action: Self-Preservation and Betrayal

The "number one" philosophy pervades the behavior of the novel's criminal characters long before it is named. When the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates join the hue-and-cry against Oliver after the pickpocketing incident, they are described as being "actuated by a very laudable and becoming regard for themselves"—a satirical gloss on the same principle. The narrator observes that "self-preservation is the first law of nature," a maxim Oliver, despite his upbringing by "philosophers" (the workhouse board), has not been taught. The gentleman in the white waistcoat repeatedly predicts that Oliver will be hanged, a prophecy that functions as a threat of what happens to those who cannot or will not play the "number one" game. Even Mr. Bumble, stripped of his beadle's dignity and henpecked by his wife, invokes the principle in his own defense: when accused of complicity in destroying evidence of Oliver's parentage, he protests that "the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction," to which he retorts, "If the law supposes that, the law is a ass—a idiot." His complaint is that the law has failed to recognize his own "number one" status.

The Limits of the Doctrine

Yet the novel ultimately demonstrates the insufficiency of "number one" as a guide to life. Nancy, who has lived by the gang's code for twelve years, breaks it when she secretly meets Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow to reveal Monks's plot against Oliver. She refuses to betray Fagin directly, saying, "bad life as he has led, I have led a bad life too; there are many of us who have kept the same courses together, and I'll not turn upon them." Her loyalty to something beyond pure self-interest—her attachment to Sikes, her remnant of conscience—leads to her murder. The wily old Jew himself, in his final hours, is reduced to a snared beast, his cunning utterly useless against the scaffold. The novel's resolution, in which Oliver is adopted by Mr. Brownlow and the Maylies form a community bound by love and gratitude rather than self-interest, offers a quiet refutation of the "number one" creed. The closing lines affirm that "without strong affection and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, happiness can never be attained."