How does Dickens make the reader feel about Pip in chapter 1?
Charles Dickens who was born in 1812 and died in1870 was a very popular writer as he had the skills to attract the reader. This helps in great expectations as he helps to put the reader in Pip’s shoes and makes us feel sorry for him. Dickens did not have a great childhood himself, growing up in poverty and working at the age of 12, because of this Dickens emphasises how bad poverty is and adds this effect on Pip. In the novel ‘Great expectations’ Dickens uses many different and useful techniques to make the reader feel affection towards Pip. These include describing the setting and atmosphere around Pip, pathetic fallacy, first person and the use of very long sentences and lists. These techniques are used in order to involve the reader in the story.
In chapter one the reader immediately notices that Pip tells the story. The use of first person is very effective in the way we feel about Pip, as it is he who is telling the story. We believe what he believes. When he comes to his own conclusion about what his parents looked like from the writing on their gravestones we imagine what they look like with him. We believe too that his father was a ‘square stout dark man, with curly black hair, and his mother was ‘freckled and sickly’. This makes the reader feel affection for Pips child like way of looking at the world. From the very beginning it becomes clear that the story is told by the adult Pip looking back over his life the novel opens with Pip’s earliest memory as a child. When Pip says ‘my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip’ at the start of chapter one, we think of Pip as a young innocent child. We have some affection for this amusing confession. When we find out Pip’s mother and father have died we feel sorry for him. By using first person Dickens makes Pip more believable, and you can really imagine that Pip is writing the novel.
