‘It was a raw afternoon’, ‘this bleak place’, ‘the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing’.
These descriptions of the scene are complimented by the descriptions we are given of Magwitch.
‘A fearful man, all in coarse grey…smothered in mud…stung by nettles…and glared and growled’.
Both the environment and Magwitch lead the reader to expect great things from the story, and so read on to see if they are fulfilled.
‘Great Expectations’ is written in the style of Bildungsroman. Dickens has written the story as if it were the characters autobiography. It is told in the first person by the main character, who looks back over his childhood and tells the story of how they reached adulthood and found a settled identity. The first paragraph of ‘Great Expectations’ is written very simply, suggesting that the story is seen through the eyes of a child.
‘My fathers family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Phillip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be known as Pip.’
This introduction is also evidence that the story is in the genre of Bildungsroman and that Pip is looking back on his childhood because he mentions that
‘His infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip’.
This suggests that he is now grown up.
Pip is a very imaginative child, even though his parents have been dead since before he can remember, he has drawn out the faces of his mother and father in his mind so that he can picture them whenever he thinks of them.
‘The shape of the letters on my father’s grave, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair…I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly’.
This creativity of Pip makes the reader think of him as very naïve and innocent. We get the impression that pip is a very small quiet boy who isn’t very strong. Upon his meeting with Magwitch he has to plead with him not to hurt him as he is incapable of defending himself. When asked his name by Magwitch, Pip answers in what must have been a quiet voice, as Magwitch has to ask him to repeat himself.
“‘Tell us your name!’ said the man’
‘Pip Sir’
“‘Once more’…’give it mouth’”
Magwitch describes Pip as having ‘fat cheeks’. Pip then tells us how he was ‘undersized for his years, and not strong’, thus making him helpless against Magwitch. Whilst being threatened by Magwitch, Pip is frightened and has to hold tightly onto the gravestone that he has been placed upon to stop himself from crying.
Magwitch, on the other hand, is an escaped convict. He is depicted as very frightening, strong and threatening. The instant that Magwitch is introduced into the storyline we are given a glimpse into his personality.
‘Keep still you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’
He is aggressive towards Pip, and uses his tactic of threat to make Pip obey him. When he asks Pip to bring him food and a file he makes clear to Pip that he is in charge and will decide weather Pip is allowed to live or not.
“‘Now lookee here,’ he said, ‘the question being weather you’re to be let to live’”
Magwitch is described as:
‘A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a 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 has 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.’
A man of such description is bound to strike fear into such a small boy as Pip.
He is a lot stronger than Pip, so uses this to his advantage. He turns the boy upside down to empty his pockets. Magwitch is a desperate man in need of the help of Pip. He has escaped from jail and is on the run, therefore has no food or resources. He eats the bread that he has found on Pip ‘ravenously’ as he is starving.
Pip and Magwitch are extreme examples of contrasting appearance and personality. Pip is an innocent, imaginative, helpless child with no worries in the world. Magwitch is a convict; therefore he must have a shady past. He is rugged, strong and totally overpowers Pip. Magwitch uses this power that he has over Pip, to control him and scare him into helping him. Magwitch frightens Pip by being very physical and heavy-handed towards him.
‘He seized me by the chin’, ‘the man…turned me upside down’, ‘He tilted me back as far as he could hold me’.
These are all examples of Magwitchs’ power over Pip. Magwitch needs to rely on Pip as he is the only one who can help him, he is a convict so will be sent back to jail or sent to his death if he is caught. Pip, being a child, doesn’t understand this and is only interested in not being killed himself. Magwitchs’ tactics to get the help he needs are successful, as he has scared Pip even more by telling him that there is another man hidden with the convict, whom is even more dreadful than himself.
‘A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open.’
We do not know whether the man I telling the truth to the child, but any child would not want to find out. This ‘young man’ whom Magwitch speaks of may be just another tactic to scare the boy and have no reality whatsoever, or this ‘young man’ may be a split personality of Magwitch himself. If the boy disobeys him then he will find him. The boy has already told the man where he lives so has no reason not to believe that this ‘young man’ may find him.
The landscape that Dickens has described creates a sombre, frightening mood and atmosphere. This chapter is set in the graveyard of the village church. Surrounding the church is a marsh country. The weather that day was bleak and the wind is said to have come from ‘that distant savage lair’. Everything that Dickens has used to describe that day is within the semantic field of horror and death, which adds to the tension of the chapter. In the later part of the chapter, as Magwitch is leaving, Pip looks about himself and sees the land around him.
‘The sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed.’
The sky reflects the feelings of Magwitch and Pip. Magwitch is a dark sinister character whom is aggressive and desperate and Pip is scared and alone.
Physical objects that can be seen by Pip also add to the atmosphere of the chapter.
‘I could faintly make out only two things…the other a gibbet with some chains hanging to it.’
The gibbet is where people are hanged and so creates a sense of horror and fear. One might think that this gibbet has some relation to the rest of the story, and would read on to see if this expectation is true.
For an opening chapter to be effective it needs to have a positive effect on the reader other wise the first chapter is all that they will read. ‘Great Expectations’’ first chapter has been written well by Dickens. He has introduced the characters and described them well and we get a good understanding of the personalities of both Pip and Magwitch. Dickens uses different techniques to show the two different characters, with Magwitch we discover him mainly, through the medium of speech, and how he acts towards Pip. We find out about Pips character through his actions and how he reacts to Magwitchs’ treatments. The atmosphere and landscape that has been described adds to the tension of the chapter and sets the scene well. Dickens has used dark, bleak colours, and has used pathetic fallacy with the wind and weather to create the sense that not everything is as it should be, and something is about to happen, this is very much similar to the opening chapter of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, where the 3 Witches meet in a derelict place in similar weather conditions. The ending of the chapter is very dramatic, Pips imagination takes over and he imagines that the man he has just spoken to is the pirate who was hung nearby, come back to life.
‘The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come back to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again.’
The chapter ends with questions which have been left unanswered such as ‘Who was Magwitch?’ ‘Will Pip return with food?’ ‘Will he keep this meeting secret?’ ‘Will Magwitch kill Pip?’ and so on, thus making the reader want to read on.
Compared to Magwitch, Pip is only a tiny defenceless boy. He is scared by him and also by his own imagination. The reader feels sympathy towards Pip and easily understands how he must be feeling in such a situation.
Overall I think that the opening chapter of this book is extremely effective, and leaves the reader with great expectations.
