Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Great Expectations was one of numerous novels written by Charles Dickens. The novel was written in 1860-61 in the Victorian era. Charles Dickens establishes the identity of young pip at the start of the novel. Pip is the protagonist in the novel. Pip of the working class wants to improve himself and desires an education to be good enough for a girl from the upper class called Estella. The novel explores themes of class, education and the penal system in Victorian times. Pip as an adult who has matured is looking back at his life and he is narrating his story.
Chapter one contains a lot of information about Pip. We can learn his role in the novel, his past, present and a bit of his future. We learnt that Pip’s real name is Philip Pirrip, but he is known as Pip. As might already know pip is the protagonist of the novel. We first see pip in the graveyard in the marshes looking at his parents and five of his little brothers graves that died young. One of Dickens’ great strengths as a writer is his use of narrative to describe places and convey atmosphere. In Great Expectations the main character, Pip, and this first person narrate the novel narrative gives us Pip’s personal response to the strange and often sinister places in which he finds himself. In Chapter One we are given a detailed description of the bleak, dark churchyard in which so many of Pip’s relatives are buried. The churchyard itself is described as being a “bleak place overgrown with nettles” and beyond it lays a “dark flat wilderness”. The river is described as a “low leaden line”, while the sea is a “distant savage lair”. Such description builds up a sense of dread and foreboding and the reader starts to expect something awful to happen. Pip lives with his sister, Mrs Joe Gargery who married Mr Joe Gargery who is a blacksmith. Pip’s family are of the working class who didn’t have much money or education. Pip is to a certain extent very apprehensive. We can see this when he meets the convict. When the convict starts asking Pip his name, Pip replies “Pip. Pip sir!” there is a repetition telling us he is scared and eager to do as the convict asks. Pip is pretty imaginative because he was imagining what his parents looked like, “the shape of the letters on my father’s tomb stone, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair ” this shows us that Pip was quite imaginative as he imagined how his parents looked by the carving on the tombstone. Pip is quite respectful because when the convict was threatening to rip out his heart and liver. Pip was being respectful out of fear, “Yes, sir” this shows us he is still calling the convict sir seven if the convict was threatening him. Pip’s relationship with Mrs Joe is not a maternal one. She clames to have risen Pip ‘by hand’. This is because she wants to get a reputation for being kind and acts like she is in the higher class among the community. Joe and pip are fellow sufferers of Mrs Joe. Mrs Joe treats Joe and Pip the same way, this is because Joe is a bit slow minded. Pip and Joe’s relationship is good because the care for each other. When Mrs Joe was out looking for Pip, Joe warned pip that she was out looking for him; “she’s been on the ram page, the last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She’s a coming! Get behind the door old chap, and have the jack towel betwixt you,” this shows us that Joe cares about Pip. The way pip describes Joe “he was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow- a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness,” tells us that Pip thinks of Joe as a friend but also acknowledges his weakness. The novel genre is Bildungsroman. It fits the tradition of an autobiography because an adult Pip is telling the story of his life. It has an other feature that makes it a Bildungsroman, Ancestry, because many of the English Bildungsroman has a protagonist who is often an orphan.
