Firstly, I will start with Pip. When we first meet Pip, he informs us, the reader, who he is and where and how he has come to be in the world. This instantly creates sympathy for him because he says about his parents and five brothers being dead. Many people would not know that feels but can still try and sympathise. When Pip meets Magwitch for the first time, he is in the churchyard, which is far away from his house and any other
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place in fact. Pip is feeling alone, scared and upset even before Magwitch arrives. The dialogue between Pip and Magwitch shows that Magwitch is very much in charge and that Pip is trying very hard not to upset him because he is scared of getting his throat slit.
With the story being written in the first person narrative of young Pip, it assists the reader in feeling involved with the story, feeling as though they are the one that is stood in the churchyard, ‘seized by the chin.’ As though they are the one Magwitch is threatening. With Pip as the narrator, we get wonderful descriptions of characters seen through the eyes of a child. ‘A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled, and whose teeth chattered in his head,’ is the description given to Magwitch’s character when Pip first meets him. His use of adjectives such as ‘fearful’ helps the reader to again visualise the character.
Pip is, as a character, quite sweet and well-behaved, but to his sister, Mrs Joe Gargery, he is anything but. As Pip is but a child, he is not listened to, this has quite dramatically changed and nowadays most children are allowed to air their opinions as well. For this reason, for most of his life, I think Pip gets over-looked and one of the only people who does listen to him is Joe Gargery, his sister’s husband.
As for Miss Havisham, we first meet her character in the dark and dingy setting of her house which as been kept the same ever since she was stood up on her wedding day. When she talks to Pip, she treats him with intelligence realising that he is not a stupid boy. This is very different to the way Estella treats
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him, I think this is because Miss Havisham has bought her up to hate all men. Miss Havisham has barely met Pip for two minutes when she confesses to him that she is heartbroken. She then orders him to ‘play, play, play!’ I think this would have made Pip feel very awkward. Again, with Pip as the narrator, he explains to the reader his fear for this new place, ‘So new to him, so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us.’ This gives the reader an idea of how long Miss Havisham has been in that same house doing the same things every day. Pip describes Havisham as ‘corpse-like,’ this puts again, clear images into the reader head.
Miss Havisham’s attitude is clear from the way she speaks to Pip and Estella, it shows that she is still bitter about being jilted at the alter, I think this is the reason she has taken it upon herself to hurt as many men as she can. Miss Havisham never leaves the house, she never sees daylight, yet she still manages to survive, this is proof of the era when in which Great Expectations was written when servants were still a very common fixture in upper class households.
I think Dickens uses phrases such as ‘tears started to my eyes’ and emotive language such as, when Miss Havisham refers to her heart, ‘Broken!’ This is hard-hitting and the reader remembers these moments clearly as key moments in the story. I felt, when I read this story, extreme pity for Miss Havisham and I also felt Pip’s fear when he was in the churchyard with Magwitch, this is all due to the great quality of writing. I felt the most sympathy for Miss Havisham because she is completely heartbroken and I don’t think she’ll ever get over it. I think Dickens is still read today because his writing was very modern for his time thus making it as relevant today as ever, if not more. I think it is Dickens’ great character and setting descriptions that still allows his literature to be enjoyed today.
