What Impressions Do We Gain Of Pip's Character From Chapter One And How Has Dickens Achieved This?

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Phoebe Casey

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What Impressions Do We Gain Of Pip's Character From Chapter One And How Has Dickens Achieved This?

'Pip' is very much a child in the the first chapter. However, it is Pip narrating it as an adult ( retrospective narrator). You know he is a child by his 'childish' thoughts and his rather odd imagination. He manages to come up with the 'childish conclusion' that his father is a 'square, stout, dark man, with curly hair' just by looking at his fathers tombstone. Also, that his mother was 'freckled and sickly'. It is quite bizarre that Pip has managed to conjour up that idea from a tombstone. I think Dickens has done this to prove a childs nieve, yet wild imagination. I think Pip tries to trace his parents or identify them this way just so he can feel placed in the world and so he can feel he fits in. He also does this to find out who he is and a bit about himself and his family.

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Pip also feels for his family very much, even though he never knew them, not even a photograph as 'their days were long before the days of photographs'. Dickens uses words like 'mine' or the repeated word 'family'. This proves that Pip still associates himself with his family even his 'five little brothers' who he's never even set eyes on.

An impression I also recieve from Pip is that he is very polite. He repeatedly uses the word 'sir' when speaking to Magwitch even when Magwitch is threatening to cut Pips throat.

I also believe that the setting has ...

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