‘Hold your noise!’ Pip is obviously scared and when a terrible voice shouts this to him it startles him. The way that Dickens describes the voice makes us think how pip must have been scared, a little boy with a horrible voice shouting orders at him “ ‘ Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from the graves at the side of the church porch.” The first few sentences that the person who is shouting at pip are not very nice and we can imagine how tense and scared Pip must have been feeling, it can’t be very nice when someone threatens to cut your throat.
‘ Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’ Dickens is creating Suspense as he is describing something that is happening but as he continues we gradually find out more. This is a good technique to make the reader continue reading, as they want to find out what is going to happen next. The description of the man is quite frightening and is everything and more that we could think it might be, or the sort of image that would represent a man bellowing these commands at poor Pip.
‘A fearful man, all in course grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered when he seized me by the chin.’ This is a very descriptive piece of text and bring a very good visual image of what the person looks like and this is also an important factor in the way Dickens creates Suspense ‘Visual images’ These are always important when building up Suspense as it makes the reader more able to visualise what is happening and/or going to happen. It makes us see what is being described and think of all the possibilities of what could happen next. Dickens describes Pip and The Convict in the Churchyard and the Convict is asking Pip what his name is and where he lives. The Convict is obviously hungry because when he tips Pip upside down and a piece of bread falls out Dickens describes the way in which pip saw him eating ‘ he ate the bread ravenously’. You can tell the man was obviously hungry as he made remarks about eating pips cheeks. ‘You young dog,’ said the man, licking his lips, ‘what fat cheeks you ha’ got.’ And ‘ Darn me if I couldn’t eat’ em,’ The convict isn’t stupid and we can tell this because when Pip tells him that he lives with his sister Mrs Joe Gargery wife of Joe Gargery the Blacksmith he looks down at the iron on his leg and thinks how he can get rid of the iron. After Pip says this, his actions towards Pip become more threatening.
‘ Now lookee here,’ he said ‘ the question being whether you live. You know what a file is?’
‘Yes Sir’
‘ And you know what wittles is’
‘Yes sir’
After he says this he becomes even more threatening so Pip will do what he wants
‘ You get me a file’
‘and you get me wittles.’
‘You bring ‘em both to me.’
‘ or I’ll have your heart and liver out’
The Convict is clever and we can tell this because he makes out to have someone else with him. ‘A young man’ and he tells pip that the young man is worse than him so that Pip would be very frightened and do what the Convict wants him to do
‘ Now, I ain’t alone, as you may think I am. There is a young man hid with me, in comparison with which I am an angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way percoolier to himself, of getting a boy, and at his heart and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes up over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open’.
After the convict says this we are wondering what he will say next as this piece of writing is very strange. It starts nicely but to scare pip it finishes terribly by the convict saying a young man will tear open a young boy.
Dickens leaves the reader wondering if the Convict is religious or not because when he lets Pip go he makes pip say
‘ Lord strike me dead if I don’t’, which either means the Convict believes in a Lord or the convict believes that Pip might believe in a Lord so it would give Pip a better reason for coming back, if the fact a young man willing to tear out his heart and liver isn’t enough. When the Convict lets pip go home Pip runs away towards his home. He is obviously scared and occasionally looks back to see if the Convict is still there. The end of chapter one explains how Pip sees in the distance a Pirates gibbet, which makes him think of the horrible young man. He looks around for the young man and then becomes frightened again and so runs all the way home without stopping. This technique at the end of the chapter is called a cliffhanger and it makes the reader want to read on leaving them in Suspense in what is going to happen next.
Dickens also wrote The Signalman and I will briefly explain the first few paragraphs how Dickens creates Suspense In the Signalman: The Signalman has a very unusual beginning
‘ Halloa! Below there!’ Dickens creates suspense in the first few paragraphs of the signalman by once again luring the reader into an unknown atmosphere. He start off the story with someone shouting down at a signalman and this is the first piece of Suspense. The reader is left wondering what will happen next or what the signalman will say. The man shouting down is asking the signalman if there is any way, which he can come down and talk to him. The next large area of Suspense is when Dickens describes a train passing by
‘ Just then, there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush which caused me to startle back, as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapour rose to my height from this rapid train , had passed me and was skimming away over the landscape.’ Dickens builds up suspense by describing the train passing in so much detail and leaving us to wonder and imagine what will happen next. Dickens is very good at using imagery in his character and having a visual image of a character helps that person to understand the story more. The way in which Dickens explains the surroundings and the characters is in so much detail we can almost picture them as if they were in the room with us.
In the Signalman Dickens describes the descent in which the person has to make to travel down to the signalman. It is so detailed you can picture being there. Dickens also uses the senses to enhance the feeling of what he is describing. His favourite sense is sight as most of the things he describes are to do with seeing the object he is describing.
‘ There by a dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough descending zig-zag path notched out: which I followed. The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down.’ Dickens also uses complex words to portray his suspense
‘ For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the path.’ Dickens describes the thoughts and images that the man sees when he comes down to talk with the signalman.
‘ I resumed my downward way, and, stepping out on the level of the railroad and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark sallow man , with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in a as solitary and dismal place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way, only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction , terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a Barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air.’
This section is a perfect example of how Dickens creates suspense in the Signalman and great Expectations. He uses great detail to lure a reader into an unknown atmosphere. This makes the reader want to read on and desperate to find out what is going to happen next. A combination of interesting and thorough detail, careful choices of words and the five senses create an excellent base for building up Suspense in Dickens Stories. This is why he is such a brilliant Suspense writer.
