In great expectations, Charles dickens uses light and dark to represent good and evil through out the three stages of Pips expectations. They reveal the personalities of the characters through subtly symbolism, and foreshadow good or bad events to come.
In the first stages of Pip’s expectations many things happen that set the mood or the book. It was a “raw afternoon towards evening” when Pip was at the churchyard looking at his parent’s graves “Philip Pirrip [and] also Georgiana” and at the “dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard” (10). When a criminal, named Magwitch, “with broken shoes”, and “with a great iron” upon his legs comes out of the brush and grabs Pip “by the chin” (10). This encounter is all staged in the marshes were the weather is dark and damp, and the sun is just starting to set. When dickens says that the place was “bleak [and] overgrown with nettles” he is fore shadowing events to come by showing that the weather is dark and sulking just as the convict in the bushes. The convict in this first scene is depicted as a gruff man that is terrible and only out for himself in this world. But just as the dark turns to light in the morning he might also have a change of character. There is perfect evidence that he is not completely with out feeling, or fear, for he says before he is forced to spend the next night in the marshes the “[he] wishes that [he] was a frog. Or an eel” (13) for it would make the nights in the lonely, cold, and unforgiving marshes easier to bear. Later, in the book Pip is forced to go play for and old reclusive lady named Miss Havisham. When pip first enters the room that Miss Havisham is in, he thinks that every thing is white, but as he looks he notices that what “had been white” now over many years had ”faded and yellowed”(67). The room has “no glimpse of daylight”, but is completely white and lit by eerie “wax candles” (66). Miss Havisham herself is very crazy just as her living conditions are. She is dressed completely in a white (now yellowed) wedding dress and all the clocks are all stopped at, 20 minutes till 9. Now this example of light and dark is slightly controversial because light generally means good and dark means bad. Miss Havisham is not good but then she is not totally evil. Miss Havisham used to be a good person with bad selfish tendencies. She had fallen in love with a man, that on her wedding day betrayed her and left with a lot of her money, he was her light and as he left her heart the darkness took over. As she got older she tried to block out the good in the world that is why no natural light is allowed into the building. She lost the light or good in her life, when Compeyson left her, so now when she is most empty she is trying to fill that gap up with Estella, her prodigy, and with Pip a gentile hearted boy that still knows the meaning of love. But they are not the same as the love she once had, just as the candles could never be a good substitute of the sun. The night that Mrs. Joe is brutally attacked Orlick, Joe, and Pip were both supposedly in town that day because of a half holiday. Pip visited Miss Haviaham, but then found out that Estella had gone abroad to study in France and would be gone for awhile. After his visit with Miss Havisham pip stops at the Pumblecook parlor to hear Mr. Wopsle reading a story about a man who nearly kills his relation, hopefully that someone out of lack of will power would become his benefactor. The story is foreboding the event to come with Mrs. Joe. When they finally leave the place it was “a very dark night” and a “heavy mist” “fell wet and thick” (132). As they are walking they meet Orilick on the road, he is slouching around in the dark. When the trio gets to the jolly barman they find out that something is the matter at Pips house. Mr. Wopsle says that while Joe was out, the house was violently entered and Mrs. Joe has been attacked supposedly by convicts. They all rush home in the dark gloomy night with the oppressive fog and the wet and muddy ness. Pip walks in and sees that Mrs. Joe was knocked down from the back of the head supposedly unawares, and was greatly damaged.
