“intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea”.
In these novels the natural limits of the childhood world are shown by these physical boundaries, Pip cannot leave his miserable, dark, poor world because he is too young to earn his keep and look after himself in the outside world, the boys in `Lord of the Flies` do not have the necessary skills to escape the island because they are children, they cannot build a boat or contact people off the island because they lack experience.
The narrative voices in the books are dissimilar, `Lord of the Flies` being told in the third person, by an omniscient narrator who can see the disaster which is impending upon the boys. `Great Expectations` is told in the narrative, it is told by Pip as if it was a memoir. The reader can see the differences in the two styles by the way the characters are introduced, in Golding’s novel, Ralph comes in with “The boy with the fair hair”, his name is not mentioned. In `Great Expectations however, Pip introduces himself with
“So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip”
,Which is much more personal. The use of both the opening chapters in the book is to establish the characters and the relationships between the characters. There are two more dominant characters, Ralph and Magwitch, who both need something from the weaker characters, Piggy and Pip. Ralph needs Piggy’s intelligence though this is only starting to emerge in the opening chapter, where Ralph has to look to Piggy for help with the conch, “”He blew from down hear””, and with organizing the boys (taking down their names)
,“Now go back, Piggy, and take names. That’s your job”.
Magwitch needs Pip for food and for a file,
“You get me a file.” He tilted me again.” And you get me wittles.”
But although it is Ralph and Magwitch who are dominant, it is Piggy and Magwitch who are quite similar in the opening chapters. Both of them are outsiders, Magwitch because he is a convict, and Piggy because he is fat, working class, has asthma and wears glasses, they also have accents which are different to the other people around them, Piggy has a working class accent, “”And this is what the tube done.”” While his contemporaries have middle class accents. Magwitch has a rural, garbled accent and says things such as, “”Pint out the place”” and “wittles”. In the opening chapters both Piggy and Magwitch have physical impairments, Piggy wears glasses and has asthma, as you can see from these phrases,
“looked up through thick spectacles”
, (pg12), and ”on account of my asthma”, (pg 12). Magwitch is inflicted with a leg iron (from prison), has a limp and is generally in a bad state,
“A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg”, “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”
. Unlike Magwitch, who at least with the leg iron, is ashamed an wants to get rid of these impairments, Piggy is proud of his deficiencies, which makes him seem pathetic,
”I was the only boy in our school what had asthma” said the fat boy with a touch of pride. “And I’ve been wearing specs since I was three.”
What Piggy and Magwitch also have in common is the fact that they both draw and seek strength from a person who is not there; in Piggy’s case it is his aunt,
”My auntie told me not to run,” he explained, “on account of my asthma”
. Magwitch has his “young man”, he uses this figure to frighten Pip and have power over him, just as Piggy uses his aunt to provide him with excuses not to do things, but Magwitch’s “young man” is fictional, as you find later on in the book, while Piggy’s aunt is real.
Piggy is also similar to Pip, in the fact that he is an orphan, and is looked after by another family member,
”My dad’s dead,” he said quickly, “and my mum”, “ “I used to live with my auntie”.
Pip’s family lie dead in the graveyard, but instead of an aunt he has a sister, “Ms. Joe”. It is assumed in `Lord of the Flies”, that most of the other children’s parents are also dead because of a war that is going on at the time,
”About the atom bomb? They’re all dead”,
however most of the children don’t seem to realise the fact that they could be orphans unlike Pip and Piggy.
The timescales in the two books are also different, `Great Expectations` starts when Pip is quite young and spans about twenty years, `Lord of the Flies`, however only lasts a few months, you can tell this by the fact that none of the boys reach puberty though at the beginning some of the older of the boys are reaching the end of early childhood,
“He was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of childhood”.
But although the time spans in the whole books are very different, the space of time which the opening chapters take up are very similar, both are within a day, in `Lord of the Flies` it lasts the few hours between Ralph and Piggy meeting, and Jack, Ralph and Simon descending from the mountain. In `Great Expectations`, it lasts the short space of time of the encounter of Pip and Magwitch, and Pip’s return home.
In both `Lord of the Flies` and `Great Expectations`, the main characters are vividly described. Ralph, until his name is found out is always “the fair boy”, and his physical appearance is described in great detail,
“You could see now that he might make a boxer, as far as width and heaviness of shoulders went, but there was a mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil”,
this description brings out an image of Ralph as examples such as the part about the boxer have been used to help you picture him. Piggy is also described in the opening chapter,
“He was shorter than the fair boy and very fat. He came forward, searching out safe lodgements for his feet, and then looked up through thick spectacles.”
You see Piggy as fat and pathetic, he is compared unfavorably with Ralph. Also in the first chapter of `Great Expectations`, the main characters are vividly described. Pip is shown to be a small, fat cheeked, weak and pathetic creature,
“I believe they [his cheeks] were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong”,
a particularly good description of Pip,
“and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip”,
it evokes a very strong image of a small, pathetic lonely boy. In that first chapter is also a very visual description of Magwitch in his torn, coarse and disheveled state,
“A fearful man, all in coarse 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”.
From this the reader can see that, although the opening chapters of both novels seem completely unrelated, in fact when the reader looks more closely, many parallels can be seen. For example though the settings are very diverse, one being a wind swept moor, and the other being a tropical island, both are menacing. Although these books were written almost a century apart, and at first seem to be on different topics, many of the key features are the same, and many of the characters posses similar qualities.
