how charles dickens presents characters in chapters one and eight of great expectations

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Coursework assignment on ‘Great Expectations’                     Page  of

Coursework assignment

Analysis of how Charles Dickens presents the characters of Pip, Estella, Miss Havisham and Magwitch in chapters one and eight of ‘Great Expectations’.

        The novel ‘Great Expectations’ was written in 1861 by Charles Dickens and it was published in instalments, as were many of Charles Dickens’ novels.

        Great Expectations is the captivating story about the life of a young man called Pip, and his transition from a trainee blacksmith to a fine gentleman. This story contains everything from love and life, to heartbreak and death.

        The story is written in the first person so we learn about Pip’s life through Pip’s perspective. Pip’s real name is Phillip Pirrip, but he calls himself Pip, as do all of the other fascinating characters in the novel. Dickens’ portrayal of varied, mystifying and amazing characters such as Estella, Miss Havisham and Magwitch is brilliant.

        In the very first paragraph of chapter one in ‘Great Expectations’, we find out a lot about Pip, in an amusing way. From this first paragraph the reader realises straight away that the writing is in the first person. The fact that Pip says he couldn’t pronounce his name properly when he was young so he pronounced it as Pip lets us know that he is quite a funny boy. In this first paragraph Dickens writes ‘Pip’ 3 times in quick succession, which is a very clever technique that helps the reader to remember the main characters name. In the next paragraph the reader then find out that Phillip Pirrip - or Pip as the reader comes to know him as - has already had a dramatic life, even at a young age. His mother and father died when he was very young, and he says he has never seen them “as I never saw my mother or father, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs)...” To a modern day reader, this is a very bizarre thought. Nowadays a photograph is not a piece of modern technology; it is something that everybody has, whether it is a digital camera or a camera phone. This is a good example right at the beginning of the story as to how different life was in the 19th century. After this the reader is informed that Pip had five younger brothers, who all died at a young age. This was normal in Victorian times, to have a large family and for many of the children to die in infancy. These days this would be considered a terrible tragedy; again this shows how life was different in the 19th century. Dickens must have known that this would be a very sensitive subject and I think he tried to lift the mood by using a sad yet humorous reference to Pip’s brothers – “I am indebted for a belief that I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence”. This is a sad description because it is basically saying that Pip thought of his brothers as never living, and never getting a chance to live. However, if you imagine five young boys lying on their backs with their hands in their pockets and never taking them out, it does seem a funny image, or at least a humorous way to describe such an event.

        These first two paragraphs tell us a lot of background information about Pip, and his bad experiences that he has already experienced up to the point of the start of the novel. When we are introduced to Pip in the story, we are later told that he lives with his sister, Mrs Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith.

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        Pip’s first meeting with Magwitch is very dramatic, and very well written by Dickens. In the paragraph just before the first dialect exchanged between Pip and Magwitch, Dickens switched his narrative style, from 1st person to 3rd. There is proof of this: “and that small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.” This an adventurous technique and it pays off. The reader engages in the vivid descriptions and pictures of the setting that Dickens is trying to describe, which in my opinion is a tranquil and peaceful church courtyard, but the weather is very ...

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