Charles Dickens also occasionally uses colours to complete an image he is trying to make, an example of this is when he describes Mrs Hubble, “I remember Mrs Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue”.
Sylvia Plath uses a lot of irony in this story. When she describes the narrator’s home and her living environment there is an element of irony I it, she tells us how the narrator would gaze at the airport, “before I went to bed each night, I used to kneel by the west window of my room and look over to the lights of Boston that blazed and blinked far off across the darkening water”, its ironic because its like she is looking into the future and seeing either a dark confusing pool of thoughts or she is seeing the pool of oil that Paul Brown would fall into, which would evidently change her life.
She then describes to us the place where she escapes the real world, where she feels safe and the only place she would feel safe, “the sound of waves was lost in the perpetual droning of the planes. I marvelled at the moving beacons on the runway and watched, until it grew completely dark, the flashing red and green lights that rose and set in the sky like shooting stars. The airport was my Mecca, my Jerusalem. All night I dreamed of flying.”
There is irony in the paragraph when she describes her dreams, “My flying dreams were as believable as a landscape by Dali, so real that I would awake with a sudden shock, a breathless sense of having tumbled like Icarus from the sky and caught myself on the soft bed just in time.” It is ironic because the series of events in this story cause her to feel like her dreams have come crashing down, also the fact that she was dreaming about flying shows that she was trying to break away from reality by imagining she was in a place where she didn’t have any worries, where she was free.
It is also ironic when she tells us of her odd friend, “Sheldon became a Nazi and borrowed a goose step from the movies, but his uncle Macy was really over in Germany, and Mrs Fein began to grow thin and pale because she heard Macy was a prisoner and then nothing more.” Because he was mocking the Nazis when really his uncle was over there as a prisoner.
A literary effect that Charles Dickens uses is circumlocution to speed up and slow down the part of the story he is describing. An example of this is when Charles Dickens slows down the scene when he writes “The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said—quite vivaciously, all things considered—“well, Mrs Joe, we’ll do our best endeavours; let us have a cut at this same pie.” He slows it down by adding parts to the sentence.
He then speeds up his text to create a feeling of panic and excitement when Pip fears that he will be found out, “My sister wet out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry. I saw Mr Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle” the sentences are sharp and quick.
Like Sylvia Plath, Charles Dickens use Irony in this story. An example of his irony could be when he describes the change of dining arrangements on special occasions, “We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the nuts and oranges and apples, to the parlour; which was a change very like Joe’s change from his working clothes to his Sunday best.” I think it is ironic because Pip will be changing himself; he will change his opinions on how to act which will help him to mature.
Another similarity between the two extracts is the way their parents/guardians perceive or are perceived by the characters. In Paula Brown the narrator has a strong relationship with her uncle but not with her mother, this is shown when she runs home after the accident to a greeting from her uncle “Uncle Frank met me at the door. ‘How’s my favourite trooper?’ he asked and then he swung me so high in the air that my head grazed the ceiling. There was a big love in his voice that drowned out the shouting which still echoed in my ears.” This affection reassured her of the safety she could find in his love and that they wouldn’t convict her like her friends did, but when David Sterling comes to the narrator’s house and tells her mother at the door that the narrator had pushed Paula into the oil, her mother immediately assumes that she had done it “When mother came back to the table, her face was sad. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said, “why didn’t you tell me that you pushed Paula in the mud and spoiled her new snowsuit?’ ” Her mother isn’t defending her or protecting her.
In Great expectations Pip has a very strong relationship with Joe but not Mrs Joe.
This is because Joe is the only person that really believes in him and protects him from getting hurt, this is why he doesn’t tell him, he doesn’t want to lose what they have by hurting Joe. This is shown when Pip tells us “It was much upon my mind (particularly when I first saw him looking about for his file) that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted that if I did, he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joes confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at night staring drearily at my for ever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue.” Pip is not scared that he will be punished, but that he will lose Joe’s trust and that is why he keeps his secret from them. Pip also felt as if he had gotten away with it even though he hadn’t actually done anything wrong.
Also a similarity in the two extracts is that both the children in the story are powerless to their parent’s views.
These extracts have many similarities despite the time difference and the different environment the two children were living in, P.B. living in the American suburbs of Boston, having the freedom to go out and play and being recognised as an adolescent rather than a small adult which is how the Victorians perceived children. Most Victorian adults did not have a very high opinion of children considering the Victorians made up the saying “children should be seen and not heard”.
This is shown in “great expectations” when Pip is with the soldiers and they are about to go and look for the convicts, the sergeant asks about the convicts “Anybody here seen anything of any such game?” Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence. Nobody thought of me.” They don’t think he could make a useful comment because he is only a child. Another time when this is shown is when Pip tells us “I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born”
Maybe these stories are based on the author’s experiences considering Sylvia Plath was American like the narrator and Charles Dickens lived in the Victorian times but they aren’t strong enough factors to rely on.
What we do know is that these children realised that they couldn’t rely on the safety and security of the adults anymore, they would have to start looking after themselves and start being more independent. They learned this through the experiences they have had.
Amber James
