How does Charles Dickens make the reader feel sympathy for Pip in chapters one and eight of the novel “Great Expectations”?
In the novel “Great Expectations,” Charles Dickens makes the reader feel sympathy for Pip in several ways; the character of Pip, the setting and its effect on him and the treatment of and influence on him by others.
Having an older Pip as narrator to the story means that the adult Pip can describe how he felt when he was younger, and make his description of himself more convincing. When Pip is first described to us, he is just a small boy visiting his parents’ graves; this makes us feel sympathy for him, as he is an orphan, adopted by his older sister. His name also makes us think of him as small: an apple pip is very small, but can grow into a tree – this idea of something small growing into something large is the theme the plot follows. The way he imagines his parents also makes us feel sorry for him, as he did not even know what his parents looked like, and the fact that his brothers also died means that he must feel quite alone.
The first chapter is set in the bleak marshland where Pip lives, in the churchyard, a “bleak place overgrown with nettles.” Dickens’ description of the marshes make it seem like a very unwelcoming place; it is a “dark flat wilderness…intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it,” with the river a “low leaden line beyond.” The marshes are made clear to be inhospitable, and Dickens makes them seem harsh to a small boy, using phrases like “the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing” – referring to the sea – and “the small bundle of shivers growing afraid and beginning to cry.” After his experience with the convict, Pip is left isolated and afraid in a frightening and flat setting: the marshes are described as being “just a long, black, horizontal line” and the river as “just another horizontal line” with “a row of long, angry, red lines and dense black lines” making up the sky. The only things that Pip can see standing are a beacon to sailors, and a gibbet; the gibbet is particularly unnerving to him, as he begins thinking that the convict could be “a pirate come to life” who has come down from it. All of this makes the reader feel sympathetic of Pip, a small boy in a stark wasteland, alone and afraid.