Pip hasn’t been taught well, we know this because he repeats the word “and” a lot, and this suggests he is a small child. He doesn’t go to school and doesn’t get taught at home. He doesn’t get taught because only rich people got taught in them days. Dickens really liked education so he emphasised how important education is in his novels, like this one. This makes us feel sorry for Pip because no one really cares about him enough to give him education. He can’t even say his real name so he shortened it down to Pip. This proves his sister doesn’t look after him well because she should at least help him pronounce his name right.
Great Expectations is about a boy (Pip) whom gets treated badly by everyone and his parents and 5 brothers are dead. In those days there were very high death rates so it’s no wonder a lot of his family members died. There were high death rates because people were extremely poor and couldn’t afford to drink clean water or food, so they got diseases. He lives with his sister and her husband and she treats him horribly. Pip is in a cemetery one day when a convict (Magwitch) comes and orders Pip to get a file for his leg and some food. Magwitch threatens Pip. Magwitch gets caught and he protects Pip saying he stole all the goods himself. A crazy woman (Miss Havisham) and her daughter (Estella) bully Pip but Pip still has a crush on Estella. Miss Havisham gets Pip a job. One day a lawyer (Jaggers) says to Pip a secret benefactor has given Pip a large fortune. Pip assumes that Miss Havisham gave him the money and that she wants him to marry Estella. Pip finally gets education with the money he received. We find out it was Magwitch who gave him the money. Pip goes away with his friend Herbert to work. He comes back years later he sees Estella looking sad and he can tell she’s become kind, them two get together and walk away holding hands. Chapter one is about when Pip is in a cemetery and is sitting near his mother and father’s gravestone and his 5 brothers. Then an ex convict comes and threatens him and tells him if he doesn’t steal a file and some food for him, he will eat Pip. The ex convict is called Magwitch and he also said there’s a man in the bushes as well and he is very violent. We don’t know if he was making this up but we assume he was. Pip believed him and was very frightened afterwards. This just added to Pip’s sadness. Chapter eight is about when Pip goes to see Miss Havisham and Estella. Miss Havisham is dressed in all white as if she was getting married, except all her clothes had turned yellow because she’s wore it so long. She sounds crazy because she talks to herself and Pip has a crush on her daughter Estella. But Estella is horrible to Pip and Miss Havisham tells Estella to break his heart a bit like how someone broke her heart. Estella makes fun of the clothes that Pip wears and he gets really upset because he never noticed it before.
From the very first chapter of the book the setting is in a graveyard. Just by reading the beginning of the chapter you feel sorry for Pip. Pip (a little boy) is in a graveyard sitting next to his family’s grave, like that isn’t sad enough we find out its Christmas eve and he is alone there. We also find out his sister (who he lives with) hits him, it suggests this in a quotation. We know she’s horrible to him because why would he be happy wandering around graveyards alone when he could be home. Also we know that he is poor and is undernourished because he would get small pieces of bread for his dinner, I know this because Magwitch takes his bread from him and bullies him. It’s quite sad and really does make you feel sorry for Pip because even though he doesn’t get much to eat a grown man has stolen what little food he gets.
Another example of how Dickens creates an intimidating setting is how he chooses a little child to go to a cemetery. Cemeteries tend to be scary generally but if you’re a child it would be even worse than that. A quote which supports this is “I was dreadfully frightened”. He was frightened because a convict just threatened to kill him. If he wasn’t in a cemetery it would be less scary because there would be people around and in cemeteries there are only dead bodies. “Dreadfully” means regretful and sad, so he was sad that he was frightened, which implies he wanted to be brave and not scared but he couldn’t help but be frightened. After all he’s just a kid. “Dreadfully” is a very formal word and shows how frightened he is. He is also using a formal word because it was how they spoke then. Also he is trying to reinforce how scared he is. It’s a bit ironic how you think of a church as a safe place, a place we’re God is watching over you yet a boy is getting threatened outside it. Dickens is creating an image in our head of a small frightened boy, getting threatened in a cemetery by a big escaped convict. This in a normal situation would be bad enough but a lot of elements are added together to give it the effect Dickens wanted.
Magwitch is an escaped convict but he gets caught again in the beginning of the book. Magwitch is fairly rough because he says “I will cut your throat”. “Cut” is a harsh, short and snappy word. The letter “c” is a harsh and rough sounding letter and “t” is a sharp ending letter. This shows he is very aggressive and full of hatred. He comes across like a monster by intimidating Pip. He is bringing out Pip’s weaknesses by being so scary. It’s cruel saying this to a 7 year old because he is only small and hasn’t done anything to him for him to say that, but Magwitch is desperate so he has to do it. Magwitch is very dirty and isn’t well looked after. We know this because if he has escaped prison and is hiding from the police outside in cemeteries he must be sleeping rough.
A quotation from chapter one is “The sky was just a row of long angry, red lines and dense black lines intermixed”. Saying the sky is angry is using personification, he is making the sky sound like a person. “Lines intermixed” this suggest the two colours red and black get mixed together to make an ugly colour, brown. “Long angry, red lines and dense black” these are dark, evil colours which mean the sky is going to get Pip. This would be very frightening for Pip. Dickens uses a list of three to describe it; long sentences make it sound powerful and engaging. The lines could also suggest it looks like a prison, the prison bars. This means that Pip might be feeling trapped and scared.
In addition, an example of how Dickens creates an intimidating setting is how there’s a sea close by which make the place sound deserted or if Magwitch chooses to kills him he could just push him into the sea and no one would ever know. A quote which supports this point would be “Down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of sea”. “Wound” gives the impression that it’s like a tornado and that once you’re in you’re going to get wound around and around till you’re trapped. A quote which supports that he thinks he is trapped is “generally that I was in a low-lived, bad way”. The “twenty miles of sea” makes it even worse for Pip, there’s so much water and if he got trapped he would drown or wouldn’t be able to make it back because it’s so long. This makes the reader feel like they should save Pip because it makes him sound so small by saying “twenty miles of sea”, you can imagine that Pip would be tiny compared to it.
Lastly, Dickens made the setting look rough and dirty so it made the place look mysterious and scary. A quote which supports this is “that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard”. The fact that it’s overgrown with nettles makes it look like anyone could hide and attack Pip behind these nettles and Pip couldn’t do anything. Also it looks like it’s not being looked after so if Pip got attacked no one would come and save him. “Bleak” could mean that he feels lonely. This makes the reader feel sorry for Pip because he’s just a small boy and yet he feels so alone.
In chapter 8 Dickens describes Satis House as a big place that’s really dark and gloomy. In the text it says that the house can be called “enough house”, which means that the house is big and is enough for people in those days to live in. A quote says “there’s enough of it in the cellars already to drown the Manor house”, this shows they are rich and have a lot of money to make alcohol. In those days they didn’t have clean water, so if they were rich they drank alcohol because that’s clean and safe to drink. This suggests that Miss Havisham might have a lot to drink that’s why she’s a bit crazy. Another quotation which supports this is “To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house”. This makes the setting sound risky because it’s dark and Pip doesn’t know his way around. “Mysterious” means odd and unexplained which shows that the place is odd and unexplained because nobody explained to Pip why he is there. It makes the reader eager to know why is Pip there and it makes the reader feel sympathy and feel protective over Pip. As you go throughout the book you get connected to Pip and you don’t want him to get hurt.
In chapter 8 Dickens has written “whether the flower-seeds and the bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails and bloom”. This suggests that even though Pip was talking about the flowers he is relating them to himself. “Jail” suggests he feels trapped with his sister and her husband. He just wants to run away because she doesn’t treat him right and barely even feeds him. He is using personification here, because the flower seeds are not human but he is making them sound like they are. This links to chapter 1 when it says “Down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of sea” because that quote suggests that Pip feels trapped. This again makes the reader feel sympathy for Pip.
One more quotation from chapter 8 is “that the rank was the garden of the house, and that it was overgrown with tangled weeds”. This suggests that no one cares about the garden and doesn’t look after it. A bit like Miss Havisham because she doesn’t wash her clothes and leaves everything the same as it was years ago, maybe that’s what she’s doing with the garden. Also it might mean that Pip is scared of the garden because in chapter one when there were messy weeds and nettles, Magwitch said to him a mean man was behind them. So it might have frightened Pip seeing the “tangled weeds” because he thinks there‘s a crazy man behind them wanting to get him. He is also in a strange person’s house so it does sound creepy for Pip, this adds to how we feel sorry for him
Dickens describes Miss Havisham as a crazy woman. A quote which supports this is “so new to him, so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella!” This sounds quite crazy because she’s talking to herself in the mirror but it really does sound like she’s talking to someone else. I think Miss Havisham is lonely and just wants some company that’s why she is talking to herself. “Had been white long ago, and lost its lustre”. Because she is wearing clothes that haven’t been washed in a while she sounds careless and dirty. In the first quote she used exclamation marks a lot which shows she’s a bit hysterical, or maybe she’s happy that she’s finally got someone to talk to other that Estella. This makes people feel sorry for Pip because on top of how unfortunate he’s life is he has a crazy woman bullying him into playing with Estella and getting rude comments made to him.
Dickens makes Estella sound like a mean, stuck up person. He writes “Why, he is a common labouring boy” by saying common it suggests that she is upper class. She thinks she is better than Pip because she says “boy” as if she is older than Pip when really she is the same age as Pip. Estella sounds very rude, an example of this is “ah, but you see she don’t”, children in those days were meant to be seen and not heard. What she said was very rude seeing as she is a lot younger than the man she was talking to. Mr Pumblechuck was very shocked by what she said and he got annoyed with Pip because of it. This makes us feel sorry for Pip because he is getting bullied by Estella but he doesn’t really realise it and he is getting really hurt by the things she says.
Pip’s initial reaction to Miss Havisham and Estella is that they are both a little odd and spoilt. He really likes Estella because he thinks she is pretty, it says this in chapter 8 “she is very pretty”, he says this to Miss Havisham when she asks him what he thinks of her. I think he thinks Miss Havisham is an odd person and he is scared of her, as anyone his age would be. This also makes us feel sympathy for Pip because he likes a girl that is really horrible to him. It is wrong that Pip likes her though because she isn’t nice to him at all its just her looks that appeal to him.
Pip was really affected by the end of chapter eight because he got really got upset by what Estella said. Estella said that he was a common labouring boy and said a lot of other things that were quite nasty. What she said made him think he was common and he never really thought about it before until she mentioned it. By the end of it he felt like he really was common which made Pip really upset and knowing he has to come back in six days most likely made him even more upset.
Finally Dickens has used a number of techniques to make us feel sympathy for Pip and they all have worked well, some relate with himself when he was younger. I think Dickens has been successful because when I read the two chapters I did really feel sorry for Pip. People do things to Pip which are just morally wrong, adults threaten him even though he hasn’t done anything wrong and he gets belittled by people his own age. I have an image in my head of him and it is of a small boy that is just really unfortunate in his life, this is what Dickens wanted us to imagine.
By Sara Jafari
