Dickens also uses humour to grab the reader’s attention and make the novel move on. He puts in the humour when the novel gets to a sad part usually when something has just happened to Pip. When he has just been describing his dead brothers Pip thinks “I religiously entertained that they had been born with their hands in their pockets”. It takes the sad part off the readers mind and keeps them reading. The humorous parts always seem to help the story move on and give it a smoother flow. Dickens also has quite a lot of sadness in the novel. After being caned by his sisters ‘“I have only been to the churchyard” said I crying and rubbing myself’
This shows how nasty Mrs Joe is and what Pip has to go through in his early years.
Charles Dickens also uses the setting very well. He uses interesting settings, he uses places like the grave yard to make an interesting setting and this helps to create pictures in people’s minds. Through out the opening Dickens uses setting and description to create a vivid picture in your mind and this helps you to be embedded into the novel and keep reading. Dickens uses very good description and he also uses similes which help to describe the setting.
“As if some goblin had been crying there all night and using the window as a pocket handkerchief” This creates an excellent picture of the setting and you can see exactly how Dickens wanted the scene to look. Dickens uses very good descriptors “the marsh mist was so thick” creates a picture of extremely thick and dirty mist which is what Dickens wanted you to see.
Colour is also used in the novel this enhances the atmosphere. In these chapters Dickens only uses selected colours mostly red and black. He describes his sister as having “a prevailing redness of skin I sometimes wondered if she washed herself with a nutmeg grater”
This shows that Mrs Joe is a harsh person and that she may be a threat to Pip as she is red. Dickens uses the atmosphere to enhance the picture of the setting which proves to be very effective. He describes the landscape “the sky was just a row of long angry red lines”
Here Dickens has used a combination of colour and atmosphere. This gives you quite a clear idea of what the setting is like and it also adds little bits of information which complete the picture of the scene.
In many places in the novel suspense and shock have been used.
“‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice”
At first this creates shock and then tension as you are wandering what will happen. The shock grabs the readers’ attention and pulls them back into the centre of the story. Dickens created a lot of suspense to help you to read on as you wanted to find out answers to the questions raised.
Dickens was writing the novel in the 1860s using Phillip Pirrip or “Pip” as his narrator, looking back on the time when he was a child and a young man earlier in the Nineteenth Century. Using this form of narration you get to see everything from Pip’s point of view. Also as Pip is recalling the story when he is an adult you see it from an adult view but with childish parts as well. This gives over two points of view and gives the reader more to think about.
The novel is set in two places, Kent and later in London Dickens creates very vivid descriptions of these places. Using real places helps the reader know where the story is set and they will have a better idea of what these places look like. This will also interest the reader as when it was written not many people would have been to visit these places as transport was not as widely available as it is now.
In Great Expectations Dickens created some very memorable characters. He was able to create these as he had a very good style of writing. Pip is a very memorable character as his life is told by himself when he was an adult and this gives you his view of himself. He is also memorable because of his encounter with the convict. The other most memorable character for me is the convict Magwitch. He is very impressive because of Dickens description of him and the way he first enters the novel unexpectedly. When Magwitch first enters the novel he is made to be a very dark man “A fearful man, all in coarse grey” the darkness gives him an even more frightful appearance which ads to the shock to Pip.
In conclusion I feel that Dickens made his opening chapters compelling by using the techniques above. I think he wrote the novel very well when you start reading it you really cannot stop. Dickens’s novel was very successful and one of the reasons is because he created the opening chapters so well.
