The cause of Pips unhappy home life is Pips sister Mrs Joe. Dickens creates the type of person that you love to hate. She is violent and abusive towards both Pip and her husband Joe. She is also two-faced, nasty and rude, especially towards Pip ‘she concluded by throwing me - I often served as a connubial missile – at Joe’ but her two faced side appears when we meet Uncle Pumblechook, whom she’s very friendly towards. ‘Mrs Joe replied as she now replied “Oh Uncle Pun-ble-Chook! This is kind!”’ She is a very nasty woman and keeps the readers attention because we want to see her get some justice for her unkind actions and she is also described in a very comical way. Pip says ‘She had such a prevailing redness of face that I often wondered if she washed herself with a nutmeg grater instead of soap’.
Joe is Mrs Joes husband and Pips brother-in-law, and has been developed to make you love him. He is a very caring man who is described in a loving way. He evokes feelings of sympathy because he is pushed around by Mrs Joe, ‘By this time my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe and taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him.’ Joe engages us to read on because he is lovable, and we want to see what, if any, part he has in the novel. We feel sorry for him because Mrs Joe is so violent and he doesn’t seem able to stick up for himself, and we like him because he protects Pip a lot, and even when Magwitch owns up to having stolen their pork pie, Joe says that he was welcome to it because he wouldn’t have wanted even a convict to starve. He is a very lovable man.
Finally Pumblechook. There isn’t too much to say about him. In a story, a certain amount of humour is needed to keep the reader enthralled, and Pumblechook is certainly the object of this humour, he is the type of person that people will just laugh at. He was put into the novel to bring a smile to peoples faces. He thinks he is superior to everyone else, and when the soldiers come to see Joe, he offers them all of Mrs Joes wine himself. He is a very pompous man who just thinks that he is better than everyone else! ‘Uncle Pumblechook who was omnipotent, waved it all away with his hand’.
Setting and atmosphere are another of Dickens’ fortes. In the famous novel of Great Expectations, Charles Dickens builds a variety of descriptive language up to create a very negative atmosphere but it is this atmosphere that engages the reader and encourages them to continue reading Great Expectations.
The novel commences with Pip, and we learn how he is an orphan and at this time is looking at the tombstones of his parents, Dickens tells us this through Pips own voice. Also the fact that Dickens tells us that Pip is a small lonely boy in this setting enthrals us. The thought of Pip being an orphan for a start, and alone in a graveyard stirs feelings of sympathy for him. Pip begins to describe his surroundings and he speaks of ‘scattered cattle’ feeding on the ‘dark, flat wilderness’. This reinforces the feelings of being solitary and of loneliness.
Pip continues describing the scenery negatively, talking of the ‘low leaden line’ to describe the river. This brings thoughts of heaviness and being trapped. ‘The wind was rushing’ finishes a third paragraph, with yet another pessimistic idea of dismal weather, making Pip hear things and scaring him.
Pip continues to describe the ‘two black things…that seemed to be standing upright’ and he talks of a gibbet where they hang people. The aforementioned talk of graveyards plus the gibbet makes everything seem very solemn and they are both associated with death.
Pip is violently threatened by an escaped convict, Magwitch, who forces Pip to steal for him. When he returns home we find that his guardian, his sister, is a very violent woman towards both Pip and his brother-in-law Joe. ‘And knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand…much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as me’.
The extract is extremely descriptive and although colours and a variety of human senses are rarely used, it still builds up a vivid and amazing setting within the readers and brain and encourages this reader to carry on reading.
Charles Dickens had a great talent of creating entertaining and engaging characters and realistic setting and atmosphere as we have already seen but the way in which his work was written adds to Great Expectations success.
Style is how a writer distinguishes himself from another. Charles Dickens for example writes in a style, which is typical of his time in the 19th century. His language takes us as readers in the 21st century a while to understand as for example we don’t in these days know what ‘tar water’ and ‘Hulks’ are. This is how Charles Dickens is different to writers today.
He uses long complex sentences, which are very elaborate and his style is a formal style, like most writers back then. He used a wide range of literacy features including an extensive range of adjectives, alliteration and similes. These features of writing create detailed descriptions of the setting and characters.
Adjectives are very commonly used in any type of descriptive writing. Charles Dickens uses them frequently to help engage the reader. An example of this style is when Charles Dickens uses the phrase ‘a dark, flat wilderness’ to describe Pips surroundings. These dark negative words bring about an eerie place and seeing as Pip is alone here, it engages the reader to find out what happens to him.
Another feature that is used is alliteration. This is a string of words which all begin with the same letter or sound. An example of this in Great Expectations is ‘the low leaden line beyond’. This gives a sense of depression and being held back and we want to see how this affects Pip.
Similes are when something is described to sound like something else; it is ‘similar’ to it. For example, ‘in his holiday clothes, Joe was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances’. This makes you feel uncomfortable with Joe.
A further example of style is repetition. This is repeating a point over and over to get your idea across. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens says ‘the marshes were just a thick horizontal line and the river was just another horizontal line’. This intended effect is the feeling of making everything seem to have an end, and being abrupt. This quote is found just after Pip is let go by Magwitch, and we wonder if this may mean an abrupt ending to Pips life. It has a strong visual appeal.
Charles Dickens’ distinctive style and clever use of language engages the readers attention allowing the reader to escape into a totally different world.
Finally, another skill, which marks Charles Dickens as a writer, who knew his market and how to achieve maximum sales is the structuring of Great Expectations that was published in instalments of usually two chapters. This was because it cost less to print and as people may not have been able to afford to buy the whole book in one go. At the end of each instalment, the tension grows, obviously to make you want to read on and so the reader would have bought the next instalment to find out what happened. At the end of the first instalment, Pip has already told us of his life to that point so we know of him being very unfortunate, but also in these first two chapters, Magwitch meets and threatens Pip and he also has to steal from Mrs Joe for fear of his life. It ends with Pip running with the stolen goods into the marshes to find Magwitch. This finishes on a high-tension point.
The second instalment goes to quite a few low tension points with Pip learning that Magwitch wont hurt him but all through Christmas dinner, Pip is living with his guilt and when Mrs Joe goes to find the pork pie (that Pip stole), the tension escalates rapidly, so much that Pip goes to run out the door, only to be confronted by soldiers. This sends the tension rocketing and this is the very last paragraph, which means the reader will be eager to find out whether these soldiers have come for Pip.
In the same way as with instalments, the whole book makes you want to read on by having these tension raising events at the end of each chapter. Charles Dickens is constantly raising questions, not just in the first five chapters but also throughout the book. Who is Pips benefactor? Who are Estella’s parents?
In conclusion, each of these factors adds together to engage the readers of both the 19th century and today. Charles Dickens was a highly successful writer and this book shows why this was, even in the short section I studied. He engages the reader from start to finish through vivid use of characters and scenery and also the variety of delicate language he uses so well. I personally, enjoyed reading the first five chapters and it had indeed engaged me as I have read on through half of the book. I loved the descriptions of characters and setting and the gripping storyline. It is by these means that I believe Charles Dickens engages the reader in the opening five chapters of Great Expectations.
