The next person we see in the story is Magwitch the convict. He appears from nowhere and scares Pip half to death “keep still you little devil or I’ll cut your throat.” This first impression makes Magwitch out to be pure evil. As with many of the characters though first impressions can be very misleading and Magwitch is no exception. The reader is supposed to see the convict in many different ways. He scares Pip, but Pip and the reader are then made to feel sorry for him. The lexical choice suggests that even nature is against the convict, “A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered by mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints.” After the reader is made to see the convict as evil, Dickens starts to make the reader feel sorry for him and see his desperation throughout the chapter. Pip even sees the convict as a sort of father figure. This is bizarre as Dickens confuses chaos with normality to show that Pips life will not be straight forward, “I was dreadfully frightened, so giddy that I clung to him with both hands.” Even though all of Pips fear is directed towards Magwitch he still grabs hold of him for safety when he feels that he’s in danger as though he is a pillar of strength for Pip. Magwitch sees Pip as small and weak so he intimidates him using the threat of violence to get what he wants from the boy. “You get me a file he said tilting me. And you get me whittles he tilted ma again. You bring them both to me he tilted me again. Or I’ll have your heart and liver out he tilted me again.” Dickens makes the convict speak in short sharp orders to make sure that he understands him in his state of shock. Dickens also repeats one phrase to hammer a sense of danger into Pip and the readers by making him speak in imperative language.
The first chapter is set in the “marsh country down by the river, within, as the river around 20 miles of sea.” This first description makes the setting sound very nice but again first impressions are very false in this book as every other description of it makes it sound dark and evil. “The marshes were just a horizontal black line and the river was just another horizontal line not nearly so broad or so black, and the sky was just a row of angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed.” Here Dickens uses pathetic fallacy so that the dark blurred surroundings could be compared to Pips Dark blurred thoughts about the convict. Also here the metaphors give the reader a cinematographic view of what Pip sees. The setting has objects and points which are very concentrated points of fear for Pip like “a jibbet with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man limped towards it as if he were the pirate come to life.” This shows pip merging the convict and the jibbet from two individual points of fear into one much more terrifying illusion. Dickens uses the setting to again emphasize Pips vivid imagination. “as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to look after him I wondered if they thought the same.” This emphasizes how Pip can see anything and make into something quite paranormal.
Great Expectations was one of Dickens later novels. He uses a lot of techniques to cinematograph fear, evil and darkness. Pathetic fallacy is used throughout the first chapter to project Pips feelings onto his surroundings “and that the low leaden line was the river and the distant savage lair beyond from which the wind was rushing was the sea.” This is Dickens using the surroundings to emphasize Pips feelings at the time. When Dickens really wants to emphasize a point he uses alliteration “low leaden line” Using alliteration Dickens wants to make this point stand out to the reader. Dickens quite often personifies objects and objectifies people to stress the fact that people weren’t treated like human beings and more like objects.
In this chapter Dickens often writes cinematographically to give the reader their own view of the story “One of those was the beacon by which the sailors steered – like an unhooped cask upon a pole.” This is good as it makes the reader feel much more involved in the story if they have a mental picture of what’s going on. Atmosphere needs to be built up in this chapter to keep it interesting and realistic and Dickens manages to do this by using a range of techniques “You know what a file is? Yes sir. And you know what whittles is? Yes sir.” Here Dickens is making the characters speak in imperative language. This builds up a very short, sharp, tense atmosphere.
It is interesting that Dickens chooses to write the novel in first person. Pip tells the story of his life right from his earliest memory but it is told by the older Pip looking back on his younger self with fondness and humour. “The small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was Pip.” I think that telling the story in the first person like this adds a sense of intimacy to the story. The story is a buildings roman about Pip but it also tries to underline some of the social problems that existed at the time “That he made it go head over heels in front of me and I saw the steeple under my feet.” Here Dickens emphasizes how Pips life is turned upside down in a second. Life was like this for many other children of the time.
I think that Dickens chose to write chapter one of the novel like he did to confuse the reader in a way that makes them want to read on to find out what happens so that they are no longer confused. Pip is introduced and is made out to be a poor boy with very little family and very lonely and isolated. The convict on the other hand is probably the most confusing character as Dickens contradicts the way in which we think of the convict in that he at first seems to be evil and nothing else but slowly Dickens tries to make the reader pity the convict and see his desperation. As the novel Is written in first person then I think it is fair to assume that Pip also feels some sympathy for the convict as it is his thoughts and memories that we are reading.