How Charles Dickens Creates Characters That Are Both Memorable and Striking.

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Sam Parsons

How Charles Dickens Creates Characters That Are Both Memorable and Striking

 

One of Charles Dickens’ greatest strengths is his ability to create characters that are both believable and memorable. Dickens appealed to all classes of society: to intellectuals and simple folk alike. In ‘Great Expectations’, which was published as a weekly serial, examples of his strengths fill the novel, and this is perhaps why ‘Great Expectations’ has remained as popular now as it was when it was first written.

It was not until 1823 that Charles and his family moved to London from Portsmouth. Up until this time he had a happy family life and was doing well at school, already he was a great reader. However life in London was very different, the family had no money, Dickens could not go to school and his father was imprisoned for debt. At the age of eleven he had to work in a shoe-blacking factory and this left a long lasting impression. This experience was relatively short-lived, the family situation improved and he was able to return back to school from there to working in a lawyers office, teaching himself shorthand. By the age of twenty he had become an established newspaper reporter and started to write short stories in his spare time as well as directing and acting in amateur dramatics.

Even by his mid twenty’s Dickens’ ability to absorb and portray information was remarkable. Partly due to his tremendous literacy knowledge (for example he read Defoe, Fielding when he was very young) and also as a result of his employment (he frequently reported on Parliament for example) he was able to use his detailed knowledge of London life and people in his writing.

In this essay I intend to discuss the characters of Pip, Joe Gargery, Miss Havisham and Abel Magwitch, because I think these four between them demonstrate Dickens’s expertise at blending character, plot and setting within the novel.

One of the techniques that Dickens uses is first person narrative. The book is written from the point of view of Pip who narrates using personal pronouns such as ‘me’ and ‘I’. This technique is effective because it shows the viewpoint of a character (namely Pip) who is able to use personal details and clearly describes surroundings.

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Pip is the person on whom the whole novel revolves; the novel starts and ends with Pip. The dictionary’s definition of a pip is ‘ a small hard seed of an apple, pear or orange’. This is relevant to Pip in a way because he is a person who should develop or grow from a ‘small bundle of shivers.’ However, his circumstances at the beginning of the novel give us the impression that this will not allow him to develop.

During Pip’s early childhood, he is unjustly suppressed and bullied by his sister, and to a lesser degree, ...

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