great expectations

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Great Expectations

By Kirsty Thompson

The novel ‘great expectations’, written by Charles Dickens, is a well known novel about class division, hierarchy and personal growth. It is one of the most prestigious novels of its era. The storyline to the book follows pip, the protagonist of the novel, as he enters the world of money, adulthood and power.

        In the first chapter pip, as narrator, introduces us briefly to his past and family. He then swiftly moves on to begin the real story starting with him as a lonely, scared, naïve little boy, crying in the midst of the churchyard weeds. Then enters Magwitch, he is dominant in this scene, fierce, knowledgeable of the real world and standing strong and untameable, leering over pip. He forces pip to relinquish information about the marshes, and fetch him a file and whittles to rid himself of his ‘great iron’ on his leg. This is the beginning of their relationship.

        Then in chapter thirty nine, pip and Magwitch meet again. It is many years since pip has been the wimpy little boy, living sheltered in amongst the marshes; he is now a gentleman with an unknown benefactor and he now lives up among the other gentle of his same calibre. A stranger happens among his presence on a dark stormy night. He recognises the stranger but cannot place a name to the face. Then not after long, he recognises the stranger to be the convict from the marshes. With pip now enlightened by the identity of the stranger, Magwitch chooses now to tell him of his reasons for visiting. He is pips benefactor, much to pips distress and horror. He talks him of how he worked to make pip into the gentleman that he is, then with the revelation done and finished, they both retire for the night, pip in his room, Magwitch in the room of pips roommate who is away, locked and bolted by pip himself so as not to harm him during the course of the night in which pip fears.

        There are many similarities and differences between the two chapters, mainly the pip and Magwitches relationship and their feelings about one another, the weather and the way it builds the story and use of language to involve the reader, help them empathise with or develop a liking to the charters.

        Chapter one is set in the vast emptiness of the Kent marshes. It’s a dark, windy and harsh place for a young boy like pip to be around. Dickens describes the marshes as a ‘dark, flat wilderness’. From this we could assume that he thinks the marshes are a place of misfortune and misery, where animals and people alike would reside together, knowing no boundaries like those of’ ‘civilised’ backgrounds. The reader could think misery and misfortune because the word dark can be linked with the likes of bad and sinister and bleak, it is a word that can imply all of the above and more. Uncivilised, especially in comparison with those of non-marsh origins, may be thought to link with wilderness because wilderness is usually associated with animals and savages who know nothing but the instincts and urges they have and feel. The effect that dickens has on the reader by just using those simple few words, creates an atmosphere and mood of living with untamed creatures that thrive off a barren and dark land.  

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        In contrast, chapter thirty nine is set in the big city of London. Pip now being a young gentleman at the tender age of twenty three, now lives up in the garden court. At the present moment within the book, the weather in London is atrocious; there is a persistent storm that is making everything gloomy and the clouds are covering the entire city, engulfing it completely. When describing London, dickens wrote, ‘stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets’. By this sentence, the writer might have meant many things. Firstly, the repetition ...

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