The sudden exclamation: “Hold your noise” jolts the reader from the gloomy, menacing opening scene. “Keep still you little devil or I’ll cut your throat” these are threatening words delivered by what is described as a “fearful man” who has a leg iron and is obviously an escaped convict on the run.
Dickens’ use of long descriptions and short quick dialogue increases the feeling of terror and breathlessness. Whilst the man is frightening to Pip he also very nervous himself and the narrative still manages to inject some humour to the situation.
The convict, who we later learn to be named Magwitch, then proceeds in turning Pip upside down, emptying his pockets. This is symbolic as the encounter with this man leads to Pip’s world being turned upside down.
On asking Pip where his mother is he is alarmed to discover she is close by. So much so that he starts to flee the graveyard. Only on learning Pip is actually pointing to a gravestone does Magwitch return to his side. As the only contact Pip has had with his parents and brothers is by visiting their graves he truly believes his mother to be named “also Georgiana”. This initially is read as funny and lightens the mood but on deeper thinking this sad statement makes the reader sympathetic towards Pip’s identity crisis.
On discovering Pip lives with a blacksmith; his brother in law Joe Gargery, Magwitch realises Pip could be of use. He forces Pip over a tombstone increasing the feeling of helplessness, whilst demanding tools to remove the leg iron. The tone becomes increasingly more threatening; Dickens describes the frightening criminal man handling Pip. Magwitch demands that Pip brings him food and a file or his equally more terrifying accomplice will seek Pip out and eat his heart and liver. Pip is so terrified he agrees to do as he has been asked. The scene closes with Pip running home leaving the reader pitying the small boy.
In the second incident I have chosen there is an atmosphere of fear, bafflement and humiliation. Pip arrives at Miss Havisham’s house already feeling dislocated and bewildered as he has just come from Pumblechook’s shop. The diction used to describe Satis House gives a feeling of confinement. The word “barred” is used frequently. The house also has a “high enclosing wall”. This implies that the house is like a prison and it is keeping someone captive. The house is said to have “many iron bars” covering windows, again showing how “dismal” and prison like this building is. There is dramatic contrast when a young girl named Estella appears. She is said to be “proud” and “pretty”, very unlike the large house she lives in. Dickens’ choice of name for this girl is significant as it means star in Latin and this again contrasts with her character and home. The simile that describes the “howling” wind as being “like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship out at sea” suggests loneliness.
Estella creates a feeling of humiliation when she refers to Pip as “boy” so often even though she was of a similar age.
Inside the house it is “dark” and gloomy making it feel disused and empty. Once Pip enters Miss Havisham’s room the mood changes to bafflement. “No glimpse of daylight” could be seen and sat in and armchair was the “strangest lady” Pip had ever seen. Miss Havisham was wearing all white. On her head hung a “half arranged” veil and she wore one shoe suggesting she had not quite finished dressing. Surrounding the lady were “half packed truncks”, “flowers” and “trinkets”. Everything “which ought to be white, had been white long ago”, it was now “faded and yellow”. Miss Havisham was a “withered” bride like the withered dress and flowers. Pip likens her to a “ghastly waxwork at the fair” and a corpse. Everything seems old and lifeless. The reader is baffled further when we learn that all clocks in the room had “stopped at twenty minutes to nine”. Time has stood still for Miss Havisham, which is very confusing and strange.
Miss Havisham demands that Pip plays with Estella. The pretty girl again humiliates Pip by saying, “why he is a common labouring-boy” making Pip again question his identity. Pip again notices the “pale decayed objects” that were surrounding him. Everything is very surreal and quite frightening to Pip.
Estella talks to Pip with “disdain” showing she feels she is better than him and Pip if embarrassed by this especially when she comments on how “he calls the knaves jacks” and how Pip has “coarse hands” and “thick boots”. This left Pip feeling ashamed. Estella continues to insult Pip until he asks to go home. Once Pip leaves the room he begins to again doubt himself and sees his boots as “vulgar” and believes that everything Estella has said to be true.
Dickens is so successful at creating atmosphere in this novel that you want to read further.