Comparing Chapter 1 of Great Expectations where Pip first meets the convict, with Chapter 39 where the convict returns.

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Robert Foster                Prose Assignment: Great Expectations

PROSE ASSIGNMENT:

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

In this assignment I will be comparing Chapter 1 of Great Expectations where Pip first meets the convict, with Chapter 39 where the convict returns.

        Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations in 1860-1861 when he was in London. It is set in the mid nineteenth century, in Kent, and London. The basic plot of Great Expectations is:

Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery one evening looking at his parents’ tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from behind a tombstone, grabs , and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items himself. One day his uncle takes him to Miss Havishams house to play. A few years later he is apprenticed to his sisters husband. One-day pip is told that he is to live in London and has great expectations thanks to a secret friend. A couple of years after this the convict comes back to pip and tells him that he is the person that has been supplying all the money to him and that ever since Pip help him he promised himself that he would make Pip a gentleman. Pip is appalled at this but helps the convict to escape back to Australia. Before the convict escapes he is caught is put back into prison, he gets ill and dies. Before he dies he tells Pip that he has a daughter who was put up for adoption when she was a baby. Pip believes this to be Estella (who he used to play with at miss Havishams house and is in love with her). Miss havisham has died and has left her money to the pockets. Pip decides to go abroad with his friend to work. After some have past Pip comes back home where he goes to Miss Havishams old house where he finds Estella. He finds her coldness and hardness has been replaced with a sad kindness. The couple leave the house hand in hand.

Dickens changed the ending of the story. The original ending had Pip and Estella meeting outside miss Havishams talking a while and then going there separate ways. Dickens based some of the book on his own experiences; apart from David Copperfield this story is the most autobiographical book he wrote.

I will now compare the different circumstances of the two main characters two chapters:

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In chapter 1 we see Pip as a young boy visiting his parents graves. He is small and frightened by the convict. He is terrified by what the convict says will happen to him if he doesn’t do what the convict wants.

“`You get me a file.' He tilted me again. `And you get me wittles.' He tilted me again. `You bring 'em both to me.' He tilted me again. `Or I'll have your heart and liver out.' He tilted me again.”

The convict has escaped from prison and is hiding in the graveyard where Pip is. He was dressed ...

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