Compare chapter 1 of great expectations in which pip first meets the convict, with chapter 39, when the convict returns

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Sean Midgley, 11SC

Compare chapter 1 of great expectations in which pip first meets the convict, with chapter 39, when the convict returns.

In this essay I will analyse “Great Expectations” written by Charles Dickens, I will include the two characters Pip and Magwitch, the convict, and the different circumstances in which the6y meet. I will also be interpreting Charles Dickens message that comes with the story, and showing my knowledge of life in the 19th century.

The first extract tells us about a boy, Pip, who is standing in a graveyard. The text reads “the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was Pip”. This gives a picture in the reader’s mind of a small young boy, who is cold and shivering and beginning to cry. In the extract we learn that Pip has be orphaned and has no family, we learn this because Dickens write “Phillip Pirrip and also Georgina wife of the above were dead and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias and Rodger infant children of the aforesaid were also dead and buried”. Pip also comes across as a polite person because when he first meets Magwitch he says ‘Sir’ at the end of sentences, for example, when Magwitch asks for his name he says “Pip sir” to a stranger. We also learn that he is timid, scared lonely and vulnerable from the language used to describe him.

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In this chapter we also meet Magwitch, the convict. He is portrayed as a dark man, who is dressed in rags and has no hat on, showing he has no money and is not a gentleman. Dickens also describes him by writing that he was “soaked in water, smothered in mud, lamed by stones, cut by flints, stung by nettles and torn by briars” this use of powerful verbs gives the reader an image of a dark, scruffy man who had travelled and been through a lot and does not have a lot of money. Also this gives a picture ...

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