Compare and contrast Dickens's presentation of Magwitch and Miss Havisham at the beginning of Great Expectations.

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Compare and contrast Dickens’s presentation of Magwitch and Miss Havisham at the beginning of Great Expectations.

   

   

   Dickens’s technique at the beginning of the novel is to write from the point of view of a small child but at the same time to allow the reader to have a different point of view.

   Pip is portrayed as being frightened and nervous. He recalls a £bleak place on a raw afternoon,” in a deserted churchyard. Dickens makes the place depressing. “The river is a low, leaden line” However, the noise of the wind seems to be coming from an animals “lair” which suggests to the reader it is Pip who is being over imaginative and so the reader is not as terrified as Pip is when Magwitch appears.

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   Although Pip is “In terror” of the criminal, the reader notices that he has no hay and has broken shoes and so feels sympathy for him. The verbs Dickens chooses highlights this:” soaked…smothered…lamed…cut…stung…torn…limped…shivered” Even when Magwitch turns Pip upside down the reader feels sorry for Magwitch because he eats “ravenously” suggesting he is very hungry.

   The name Magwitch suggests Magic and fantasy and e even sounds like a fairy tale villain. “What fat cheeks you got!” He tells Pip “Your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate.” This ridiculous exaggeration shows the reader that ...

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