How does Dickens creates sympathy for his characters in great expectations? Focus on Pip and one or two other characters you have studied.

Great Expectations

How does Dickens creates sympathy for his characters in great expectations? Focus on Pip and one or  two other characters you have studied.

In the following essay I will be exploring how Dickens creates sympathy fro Pip and Miss Havisham.

This novel is based upon Pip’s life. The story opens with the narrator, Pip, who introduces himself and describes an image of himself as a boy, standing alone and crying in a churchyard near some marshes. This immediately creates sympathy to the reader. Dickens wrote most of the novel in first person who is Pip.                    

Young Pip is staring at the gravestones of his parents, who died early after his birth so he never really a his parents ‘I never saw my mother or my father’, here we also learn that Pip’s five younger brothers were also dead ‘Five little stone lozenges each about foot and a half long of five little brothers of mine’ this information makes us feel sorry for Pip, we are given a image of a young boy sitting in the marshes staring at his families graves. Pip lives with his domineering sister Mrs Joe Gargery and she is married to a blacksmith Mr Joe Gargery he was bought up by her. Pip is a very personable character that makes the reader feel sorrow and happiness along with him. Also Pip describes his mother and fathers grave and how he thought they could have looked like ‘The shape of letters on my fathers grave gave me an odd idea that he was a trout, dark man…etc’ We get the feeling that pip misses his family even though he has never met them, and maybe in a way he wishes he had gone with them. The whole paragraph about his family steadily builds empathy. The graveyard Pip has come to visit is situated near the marshes down by the river and is described as bleak place overgrown with nettles. As Pip stared at the graves he senses a small bundle of shivers and stared to cry, at that point Pip has a encounter with a terrible voice ‘Hold your noise’ ‘Keep still you little devil or I’ll cut your throat!’ a man appears from no wear and threatens him is a very frightening thing Pip at this point was very scared ‘Oh!; don’t cut my through sir’ he pleaded in terror. This man I know as Magwitch an escaped convict he turns Pip upside down and shakes him to see what the contents of his pockets hold, and finding nothing but a piece of bread Magwitch then threatens Pip by asking him who he lives with ‘Who d’ye live with supposin you’re kindly let to live’ we are given a picture of young boy in a graveyard threatening to be killed this makes us feel sorrow for him. Dickens creates sympathy for Pip also by the setting of the place in the novel Dickens creates a bleak setting in order to emphasise the comfortless past of the central character, Pip. When we are first introduced to Pip in a church graveyard it is described as a bleak desolate place, overgrown with nettles. This creates an image of decay, so if we imagine a boy in a graveyard with a menacing man threatening to kill him we would definitely feel affection towards him. The treatment of Magwitch towards Pip I very aggressive, he uses physical force against him the way he puts on the tomb tone and bends him over and over "I pleaded in terror". It gives the idea that he is helpless and afraid.   Magwitch threatens to kill him, he threatens Pip into bringing him food and a file.  Failure to do this will cause the convict to hunt Pip down and eat his heart and liver.  At the end of there conversation Pip says good night ‘Goo-good-night, sir’ I faltered this quote tells us that Pip hesitated this shows us how frightened he was witch makes us feel sorry for him. When Pip goes to visit Miss Havisham Estella humiliates him in a very rude manner he goes there to play so when he was playing cards with Estella she called him a "stupid clumsy labouring boy” she also criticises the way he looks "What coarse hands he has , what thick boots he has”. Pip is a lonely character who doesn’t have much to look forward to and we don’t really get told that he has friends, and also by the way he is described we and the time the novel is set we don’t get the idea that he doesn’t have much of a education. If the novel was told by another character I wouldn’t have thought the novel would be the same because it wouldn’t have been as descriptive as it is now.