The setting of the first chapter is in the marshes that Dickens describes as: -
“this bleak place overgrown with nettles”
He begins to build up the mood by using the alliteration of: -
“low leaden line”
against the: - “dark flat wilderness”
which creates tension and gloom. He makes the place seem foreboding as if any intruders are unwelcome. It begins to scare Pip, the loneliness, the wind, the cold and he gets afraid. So he sits on his own and begins to cry. This desolate moment is described as: -
“and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.”
Dickens’ introduces the stranger into the story very abruptly. All you know of him at first is that he is immediately scary and threatening. He cries to Pip: -
“ ’hold your noise!’ ”
and after he appears says: -
“ ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’ “
Dickens between the strangers speech describes that the man: -
“started up from among the graves”.
This gives you the idea of him as a ghost, raised from the dead and coming to get Pip. Initially that’s scary without the added threat of having your throat cut.
His description, through Pip’s eyes talks of: -
“A fearful man all in course grey, with a great iron on his leg.”
With the stranger being ‘all in coarse grey’ the drab colour also enforces the ghost like presence already established by the way he ‘started up from among the graves’. With the incorporation of the grey clothing and ‘great iron on his leg’ suggests immediately to us that this man may be an escaped convict seeing as ordinary people don’t have chains burdening them. Dickens’s describes him as: -
“A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, with an old rag tied around his head.”
He never actually tells us that this man is an escaped convict simply because Pip does not see it, but he cleverly tells us how the man escaped in this extract: -
“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;”
We can guess already that the convict has escaped from the hulks, huge ships prisoners were held captive in moored near to the shore. The ‘soaked by water’ part is his jump from the hulks and his swim to shore. Then he is ‘smothered by mud’ as he climbs up the banks and across the marshes. The stones and flints and nettles and briars are the things slowing him down, attacking him almost, on his way to where he finds Pip in the graveyard. We later find out the convicts name – Magwich. And he plays a key role in the rest of the story.
The man threatens Pip at first by saying: -
“ ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’ “
We know Pip is frightened because when Magwich asks Pip to tell him his name – he has to ask twice because the first time Pip says it so quietly that Magwich does not hear him.
Dickens introduces comedy into this brilliantly by giving Magwich a wonderfully common accent shown in the way that the spelling of the words he speaks is different. Things like ‘pint’ instead of point. Dickens also incorporates comedy into the next part. What actually happens is that Magwich picks Pip up and turns him upside down in order to empty his pockets. Dickens describes the way Pip saw it: -
“When the church came to itself – for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet”
Immediately you feel a smile come to your lips. The way it’s put so beautifully seen through the eyes of a child – as if it is the world and not Pip that has turned upside down. This is a seemingly unimportant part but after reading the rest of the book you realise the significance of this is that Magwich is the one to turn Pip’s world upside down and take him out of the poor existence he should have had and into the world of the Gentry.
Magwich is shown to think with his feet rather that his head. When he thinks Pip’s mother is near by Dickens writes: -
“He started, mad a short run, and stopped and looked over is shoulder.”
You can see the way that Magwich is on edge and does not have time to think about things but merely time to save his own skin. His way of using actions rather than thought is shown again in this part: -
“ ‘Blacksmith, eh?’ said he. And he looked down at his leg.”
This shows to us that he is thinking that Pip can be useful in aiding his escape but we see this through actions.
Magwich then having thought about Pip’s access to the things he needs asks him to bring a file and what he calls ‘wittles’. What he actually means are vittles – scraps of food but yet again it is the accent that Magwich has coming through in the text. He cleverly plays on Pip’s fears to ensure that he will bring him what he has asked for. This extract describes his methods: -
“ ‘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 way Magwich continually uses threatening body language scares Pip into doing what he asks of him. Anyone being tilted off the gravestone they were perched on would get scared into doing whatever was asked of them simply to not be tilted anymore as it would most certainly make you feel very ill. But Magwich is clever and not only uses physical threats he also uses psychological ones. He tells Pip of a ‘young man’ that is with him. Pip believes what he is told of him but we can tell that Magwich has made him up in the way he repeats himself continually. He says to Pip: -
“A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open.”
This plays on Pip’s mind that if he does not bring Magwich the file and the vittles, that Magwich will let loose this ‘young man’ to get Pip even if Pip thinks he is safe. It’s a brilliant way to ensure beyond doubt that Pip will bring the things to him.
After Pip has sworn that he will bring Magwich the file and the vittles he says: -
“ ‘I wish I was a frog. Or an eel!’ ”
At first the reasons for him saying this are bizarre but if you think how at home a frog or an eel would be in the marshes it makes sense. Magwich does not feel at home there. He feels like an outsider being pushed away and he does not want to feel like that because it means he has a long way to travel before he can find somewhere to feel safe and at home.
The way Magwich leaves echoes the way he came in. Pip describes: -
“he looked in my young eyes as if he was eluding the hands of dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.”
The way he entered (‘started up from among the graves’ ), as a ghost like figure is shown in the way he leaves too. The hands of the dead grabbing at him as if to pull him back to where he came from. This is a brilliant use of personification by Dickens to make you feel as thought this man should be pitied as well as feared. Its as if he cannot escape from his past however hard he tries and someone or something is always trying to catch him.
In the final paragraph of the chapter, the mood dickens conj ours up is very dismal indeed. Pip turns and takes a last look at the marshes which he describes as ‘just a long horizontal black line’, the river as ‘just another horizontal black line’ and the sky as ‘a row of long angry red and black lines intermixed’. It all seems so flat and dark and uninviting that it is almost scary.
There are only two upright things in the picture painted by Pip description. He says: -
“On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered – like an unhooped cask upon a pole – an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging onto it to which had once held a pirate.”
This extract and the two items contribute even more gloominess to the scene. The gibbet is a particularly morose object. This is where the bodies of executed criminals that had been tarred and hung up there were left to rot in public view. The next part of the paragraph also links Magwich to the dead: -
“The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again.”
The whole mood of the chapter has changed from fairly comical and light hearted to deep, dark, dismal thoughts. Dickens has changed it so you do not notice it has changed – even though the change is a dramatic one. At first, even though Pip was voicing sad facts to us about his family the mood was not a serious one but as we gradually go through the comic and frightening moments, we end up at this dismal depressing point to finish on.
The expectations Pip might draw from this encounter are not the ones he concludes later on in the story because at this point he is very young but this affects him enough to have a lasting impact. He would most likely be frightened for his life if the young man comes to find him but I think he’s knows in the back of his mind that Magwich will be kind to him if he obeys his orders. Pip’s expectations do not really accumulate until later in the story but for a first chapter an awful lot has happened and you are so drawn into the story that you have to read on and find out what happened to Pip and ultimately to the convict Magwich.
