In the opening scene, Dickens purposely creates a dark, desolate atmosphere that surrounds young Pip. He also uses the idea of a black horizontal landscape. This emphasises doom and danger, as Pip is alone. Dickens uses red, black, angry colours to describe the marshes and skyline. This links the atmosphere with death and blood, and brings Pip into the life of a criminal in the society of Dickens’ time.
The beacon and the gibbet are the only things that are verticle and standing, as they are very important and have to stand out. This is because the beacons light guides in good people who will be saved from the distant savage lair, criminals being the savage beasts. The gibbet is the place where criminals will go, and they will not be saved. This, in Dickens’ view, is what will happen between the two groups of people. If Pip does steel he will go to the gibbet.
Dickens cleverly associates the graveyard with the dark, mist and the rushing winds. These provide the right atmosphere that corresponds to the gloomy, course, grey appearance of Magwitch, a criminal. Magwitch is described as being a fearful man, with a terrible voice and shuddering body. This is Dickens’ view on what a criminal was like in the society in the Victorian times.
Dickens puts across the idea of going across the marshes is a path you wouldn’t want to take as it hurts, it’s unpleasant, it’s wild and cold, it’s not attactive and it’s lonely. This also means that being a criminal is a path you wouldn’t want to take for the same reasons.
When Magwitch turns Pip upside down, it’s like Pips life being turned around. From being a well brought up boy to a criminal. Dickens wrote this to show the idea of the change in Pip’s behaviour and manner towards criminality. The appearance of Magwitch, cut and stung by nettles, scares Pip, because he doesn’t want to become like him and look like that.
Pip is about to undergo a disturbing experience as he enters Miss Havisham’s garden, as it is overgrown ang tangled with weeds. Dickens describes it like this to show that it hasn’t been cared for and there is no love, like the appearance of Miss Havisham. The courtyard is described as being lifeless and desolate; there are no pigeons, no horses and no pigs. This gives the idea that the place is abandoned and empty. The noise of the wind is compared to the noise of the wind in the rigging of a ship. This shows how quiet and scary the atmosphere was and how lonely Pip must have felt.
All the surrounding walls are very high, this gives Pip the feeling that he is trapped and there is no way out. The windows on the Satis house are all walled up and covered in rusty iron bars. Dickens has written this to portray his views on society at his time. It gives across the idea that the higher class (in the house) can not see out at people in the lower class, and the lower class can not see in. It is also like a divide between the two groups. The main gate was also locked. Dickens’ view on society is that the only way to enter the house is by money, because if you had money you would be in the higher class and therefore can enter.
Next to the house is a deserted brewery; that hadn’t worked for a long time. Dickens uses this idea to show that the brewery had once worked and was once nice, now all celebration and better days have gone from the higher class. All that is left are memories.
The passages leading to Miss Havisham’s room were very dark, this is a very unpleasant atmosphere for Pip to enter. The only little bit of hope in the house, in Dickens’ view, is Estella, as she had left a candle burning.
As Pip entered Miss Havisham’s room there was no glimpse of daylight, Dickens has written this to show his views on how the higher class has been cut off from the outside world. The objects in Miss Havisham’s room were decayed, yellow and had lost their lustre. They had faded over time like Miss Havisham. She was dressed in a bridal dress, vale and shoes that had once been white and fitted her properly, but were now yellow and she had shrivled and shrunk inside her dress. Dickens has described her like this to show that she doesn’t want to change she wants to stay in the upper class. That’s why she carries on wearing her best dress, because she doesn’t want to fall down. Even though the bridal flowers in her hair had withered with the dress and the bride. Nothings changed in Miss Havisham’s room, like the positioning of her half packed trunks, her prayer book and the time on her clocks, this also shows that she doesn’t want to change, and she wants things to stay the same.
When Pip is in the Satis house, Estella says to him, ‘that whoever has this house could want nothing else’. This means that if you do own the house it is enough, which is what Satis means. You would also have wealth, education, refinement and position. In Dickens’ view on society in the Victorian times, this is enough for someone in the upper class, they do not need love, care and compassion.
My observations, from how society was for Dickens in the Victorian times to how society is now, are very different. In Dickens’ time there were classes and different groups and divides. He shows this by having criminals living on the marshes in the harsh, wild, unpleasant conditions. He has the upper class people living in the town in well-established houses such as the Satis house. Dickens has created a perfect metaphoric society that corresponds to the physical society he lives in and the atmosphere and living conditions are right for that period of time.
