Analyse chapter one of great expectations by Charles Dickens with detailed reference to text, show how dickens encourages us to feel sympathy for both Pip and the convict

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Analyse chapter one of great expectations by Charles Dickens with detailed reference to text, show how dickens encourages us to feel sympathy for both Pip and the convict.

Dickens in his time was a social revolutionary. He could see that people were treated badly and he wanted to help change it. During Dickens’s life psychology had just become popular. Dickens was particularly interested in the theory that how a child is treated when they are young influences their behaviour when they grow up.

  Pip is the first character that we see in the novel. He is sitting alone in the graveyard looking at his deceased parents graves and thinking what they were like. “The shape of the letters on my fathers grave gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man with curly black hair. This particular line shows that although Pip is in a dark graveyard at such a young age he still thinks quite a happy humorous thought. For a young boy his imagination is obviously quite advanced and vivid. Pip is quite obviously feels lonely and isolated. “I called myself pip and came to be called Pip.” By using this phrase Dickens shows us the huge burden of responsibility that Pip has for his own life. The personal pronoun I is used by dickens to portray Pips loneliness and isolation. This can be compared to Dickens own childhood as his family were imprisoned and he lived alone when he was about Pips age. Pip for a small boy has quite a mature attitude towards death. “I am indebted for a belief which I religiously entertain that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their pockets, and never taken them out in this state of existence.” To think back to a dead family member with humour rather than sadness shows Pips mature attitude towards death which was a very common occurrence at the time.

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  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, ...

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