The introduction of humans into the scene sees the end of the animal life in the scene. As the humans approach all the wildlife is scared of and the area is completely deserted. “For a moment the place was lifeless.” The peace is broken and with it any chance of the Salinas River truly becoming paradise.
The story is set in California where few people owned land. They had either lost it due to the financial problems the depression caused or were just too poor to afford any in the first place. The people needed to find work; one of the most common jobs was to work on a farm. These people became known as migrant farmers. They would drift from one farm to the next, rarely settling for long. The two characters that enter the scene are migrant farmers and are looking for work. This is the first introduction of human life into the scene.
Great Expectations is set in Victorian England, where just like in 1930s California, the rich thrived and the poor suffered terribly. Even more distressing perhaps was the disease that swept through towns and killed many children as well as adults. This led to an increase in orphans, who have the same feelings of being alone and poor. They have the same problems as many others and weren’t much better off than the criminals in jail. Criminals were treated like animals, as were the poor community as a whole. Just like during the dust bowl, if you weren’t rich then you were a social outcast.
After introducing the character Pip, Dickens begins describing his surroundings. Dickens goes into great detail to set the scene. He describes the area as “Marsh Country” which stretches for twenty miles up to the coast. Pip is in a secluded graveyard overgrown and derelict. Beyond the graveyard is a “dark flat wilderness,” “Intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes.” It is a “raw afternoon towards the evening.” The setting is dark and there is a sense of evil and death about the place. It seems to be building upto something sinister, and does so when the criminal enters the scene. He is described as a “fearful man, in all course grey with an iron on his leg.” He almost represents death in this scene, an evil presence trying to seize Pip.
This image is strengthened towards the end of the text, as the convict leaves picking his way through the nettles and brambles. Pip recalls, “He looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves to try and get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.” It is as if he is Hades wading through the Styx. Dickens then describes the scenery again. Every thing is dark, The marshes are a “long black horizontal line;" The river, another “horizontal line” was also black, and the sky, “was just a row of angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed.”
He then describes another strong image of death - the gibbet. The gibbet once held a pirate and pip sees the convict as if “He were the pirate come back to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again.” Pip sees the man as being disconnected from life as if he were an undead being, not of this world.
The story is set in first person and begins by focusing on the main character, Pip. It explains how Pips parents have died, along with five of his younger brothers. He never knew his parents and uses the inscriptions on their tombstones to get a picture of who they were. This gives a feeling of loneliness and as the scene opens Pip is alone with his thoughts of whom his parents were.
Pip is alone. Very much like the two characters introduced at the end of the Of Mice and Men text. The characters in Of Mice and Men have each other Pip has no one. He is left alone and vulnerable in a secluded and spooky place as the evening draws in. Pip is not old enough to look after himself yet he admits: “I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.” Another character is then introduced the convict.
The convict attacks Pip; he steals some bread off of him and eats it. He then makes a comment about eating Pip too, “What fat cheeks you ha’ got.” “Darn me if I couldn’t eat em,” he threatens. But the convict himself is very weary of being in the graveyard too, more so than Pip before he was attacked. If the convict were caught attacking Pip he would no doubt be hanged, although he would probably be hanged for escaping prison anyway. When Pip points to his mother the convict “made a short run, stopped and looked over his shoulder.” The convict is afraid of being caught, as soon as Pip points to his mother he begins to flee. He is only after Pip because his young and defenceless. He also uses the child’s naivety to his advantage.
When he discovers Pip is living with a blacksmith he decides Pip could be quite useful. He wants Pip to get him some tools. He still has the iron attached to his leg. He wants a file and wittles or he threatens, “I’ll have your heart and liver out.” It is then that he begins to tell Pip the story of a young man, a man who tears boys hearts and livers out. A farfetched story to say the least but it terrifies young Pip. This threat along with the intimidation the Convict has put Pip through is enough to guarantee that he will be back in the morning with everything the Convict wants.
The truth is that the convict is just as much alone as Pip, more so in fact. He has no family at all. He has nothing. Pip is also alone and with not much more than the convict, all his got is his sister.
There are no characters introduced in the text for Of Mice and Men. People appear as no more than shadows, beings of the past. The boys coming down from the highway or the men who have worn the limb of the sycamore smooth. Two characters do appear but are not introduced. They are described though; both wearing black hats carrying blanket rolls over their shoulders emerged from the path and into an opening. The first man is described as being, “defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony noes.” He seems intelligent and weary with “restless eyes.”
The second is described as his “opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large pale eyes, with wide sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little the way a bear drags its paws.” The contrasts of character are reflected by the contrast of the setting. The story begins in a calm and peaceful part of California during a horrific time for the State. Everything is relatively tranquil at Salinas river whilst it’s chaos in the rest of the country.
There are strong contrasts in the language too when compared to the period of time. It is set during Americas “Great Depression” yet there is no depressive language used at all. Verbs, adjectives and adverbs are all used by Steinbeck to create a bliss setting for the story. This in itself may seem out of place in a story based in these hard times but for the people at the time it would create a sense of depression. I believe Steinbeck chose those words to show people what a beautiful place the earth is but that humanity is too reliant on money, that the beautiful places are often overlooked, ignored or destroyed by the greed of human nature.
Steinbeck describes the river from a distance, starting with the location, “A few miles south of Soledad.” He writes in third person and uses this to describe the gentleness of the river. He uses adjectives such as “warm”, “slipped” and “twinkling” to emphasise this. Steinbeck decided to look at the bright side of life during the dust bowl first before looking at the dark side of the poverty and depression at the time.
Dickens on the other hand doesn’t show a bright side to Victorian England at all. Everything he describes is dark, The afternoon is “raw,” the churchyard is “bleak,” and the sea is described as a “savage lair.” He uses other adjectives like this throughout the script as well as adverbs such as “he ate the bread ravenously.” This adds terror to the darkness, almost as if it is horror novel.
Dickens writes in first person from the main character Pip. This means that Pip has to survive the ordeal somehow, but at times it seems hard to see how. One of the first things the criminal says to him is, “Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!” Despite all this violent commotion Pip still remains polite throughout the script. Pip is absolutely terrified of the convict yet he still addresses him as sir, “Pray don’t do it, sir.” It is almost as if Pip is a 19th century schoolboy addressing a violent teacher threatening him with the cane. Pip is very well spoken and polite which is a huge contrast to the convict. The convict speaks slang and informally and unsurprisingly isn’t in the least bit polite. Dickens has made him this way to be more intimidating.
Overall there are many similarities and contrasts between and in the scripts. Both are set in hard and depressing times where poverty effected almost everyone and if you were amongst the poor you were treated like dirt. But the authors have contrasting opinions on the nature of the settings. Dickens describes the nature of Victorian England as darkly as he does the death of Pips family. Steinbeck on the other hand describes the nature of Salinas River, a place that he describes as being nearly perfect. Steinbeck is more concerned with how humans and the poverty they bring with them are affecting Salinas River: the worn tree and the patch where a fire once burnt.
