Alice Wright
How does Dickens create an atmosphere of fear and mystery in the opening chapters of “Great Expectations”?
Many authors often create mood and atmosphere in there novels using many techniques, the advantages of doing this is it makes the novel more interesting and all round better to read and understand, it gives a more in depth description of the story being told. The techniques that are usually used are descriptive and imaginative words that are relevant to the setting or mood that the author is trying to create. Also structure, characters and speech is used in a way to create atmosphere.
Great Expectations was Dickens second to last complete novel. It was first published as a weekly series in 1860 and in book form in 1861. Early critics had mixed reviews, disliking Dickens tendency to exaggerate both plot and characters, but readers were so enthusiastic that the 1861 edition required five printings. Similar to dickens memories of his own childhood, in his early years the young Pip seems powerless to stand against injustice or to ever realize his dreams for a better life. However, as he grows into a useful worker and then an educated young man he reaches an important realisation: grand schemes and dreams are never what they first seem to be. Pip himself is not always honest, and careful, readers can catch him in several obvious contradictions between his truth and fantasies. Victorian- era audiences were more likely to have appreciated the melodramatic scenes and the revised, more hopeful ending. However, modern critics have little but praise for Dickens’ brilliant development of timeless themes: fear and fun, loneliness and luck, classicism and social justice, humiliation and honour. Some still puzzle over Dickens’ revision that ends the novel with sudden optimism, and they suggest that the sales of Dickens’ magazine, “All The Year Round’, in which the series first appeared, was assured by gluing on a happy ending that hints Pip and Estella will unite at last. Some critics point out that the original ending is better because it is more realistic since Pip must earn the self-knowledge that can only come from giving up his obsession with Estella. However, Victorian audiences eagerly followed the story of Pip, episode by episode, assuming that the protagonist’s love and patience would win out in the end.
In the opening chapters of Great Expectations Charles Dickens draws the attention of the readers with the use of a very bleak setting in late afternoon/early evening, which Dickens describes as being ‘raw’, this gives us the first piece of information in terms of atmosphere that it is not a nice day. Dickens used the language to make the readers see an unappealing place by the use of unattractive phrases like “dark flat wilderness”, “overgrown with nettles”, “late of this parish”, etc. all of which are backed up with unappealing, and even frightening words like ‘dead’ and ‘savage’, all these unpleasant words are paradoxical to the novel’s title, which is ‘Great Expectations’, that may suggest a story of glory and success. The use of alliteration is present in the novel, like “low leaden line”, to emphasize on such feelings as depression or loneliness through the setting and indirectly towards the main character, Pip. Harsh words like “a small bundle of shivers” which depicts an imagery of depression of a child weeping, in which Pip was presented by the writer. The last sentence in the paragraph describing the setting is a very powerful one as it draws in the audiences focus on Pip and makes him look very innocent and causing the audience to have sympathy for him, ‘and that the distance savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea’, this sentence has very harsh and frightening words in it which creates a rather violent atmosphere, one that a small child would hate to be in, it then proceeds in saying ‘and that small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip’, the way Dickens introduces Pip as being ‘small’ and a ‘bundle of shivers’ creates a immediate sympathetic view on Pip and it makes the reader want to comfort him, this is backed up by stating that Pip is ‘growing afraid of it’. The comma before revealing the small, scared boys name calms the very violent introduction down as it allows a pause. All of this engages the reader’s sympathy and renders their interest through the use of evoking images suggesting fear, mystery and also tragedy, both with the characters and the setting. In the first chapter Pip tells us of how his mum and dad are dead, and tells us of the first time he meets Magwich in the graveyard, this gives us the first mention of the graveyard, and already brings the aspect of death, already Dickens has set the scene and atmosphere so that the story is already heading to be fearful, chilling, sinister and mysterious.
