Dickens uses an interesting metaphor, “The distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea” which makes us; think about a ferocious beast attacking young Pip. Here Dickens is showing us how creative and imaginative a young child’s imagination is, in this case it’s Pip and how he thinks the wind is a beast trying to get him, which will also makes the reader concerned too. As chapter 2 opened we saw an interesting contrast, as Pip runs in to his home we expect it to be a safety place, we were wrong, instead it is much more dangerous than the wilderness and the marshes because the ‘tickler’ (a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision) was being applied to him by his sister. His sister, “applied Tickler to its further investigation” and then, “she concluded by throwing me”. The modern readers would find this very disturbing but in Dickens’ time hitting children was expected to put them ‘right’, they used the proverb in the Bible, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” and this was something Victorian parents believed in and used to discipline there children.
Charles Dickens also uses a double strand narrative for effect, this means that he sometimes uses the younger Pip’s view of the world while at other times he uses the older Pip’s view in a more distanced and ironical stance. The older Pip once looks back and realises something which he didn’t realise before and puts some irony into it, when Mr Joe says, “I always treated him as a larger species of a child, and as no more than my equal” this symbolises their relationship, here Dickens writes things as their opposite for humour and curiosity.
Personally I found a section very funny when the young Pip over-exaggerates and thinks that he will be put into prison for simply stealing so little as bread with butter, he says, “I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs Joe”. An example of when we hear Pip narrating as a young boy is when he has fear of the ‘convict’. In a part of the story he fears whether the ‘convict’ is going to really cut out his heart and liver to eat, “should think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow!” While the reader at this point might find humour in it, they will also feel fear for Pip since he is very gullible.
Dickens makes the ‘convict’s’ entry into the story very dramatic and exciting for the reader. We hear him say, “hold your noise” before even seeing him, and then he comes out from behind a grave as if he himself is a dead person and is coming alive from the dead. The ‘convict’ threatens Pip from the start by saying, “I’ll cut your throat!” This is Dickens’s way of getting the readers interest by making them worry for Pip. The next paragraph, Dickens gives us a very detailed and precise description of what the ‘convict’ looked like, “he had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud” which could mean that he had been in the water and coming through the marshes.
In the fifth paragraph, there are altogether eleven verbs to describe the convict, the effect of the verbs are to keep us interested and build up questions in our head. The verbs are all negative and that’s the picture we get of the convict, however there are so many ‘ands’ used which shows the amount of things that have happened to him, there might be a few people who’ll feel sorry for him.
The ‘convict’ once threatens Pip, he told pip not to talk to anyone about seeing him or he’ll cut Pip’s throat. With the wild imagination pip’s got already, he really thinks that the ‘convict’ will actually cut his throat of. The ‘convict’ is very aggressive, and has a threatening attitude towards Pip from the start; he threatens Pip by turning him upside down and emptying his pockets. This shows that the ‘convict’ is on the run and has no time to waste.
Dickens also captures the ‘convict’s’ use of colloquial English as seen when he says, “Give it mouth”, “Pint out the place!”, “You young dog”, “You ha’ got”, “Darn me”, “wittles” and, “If I han’t half a mind to’t!” and you can see from these that the man is quite rude and doesn’t have any manners, it could also be that the man is uneducated. This showed me that the man was not from the richer areas of Britain as he had a cockney accent and a gruff voice.
In chapter 2 Dickens presents two strongly contrasting characters, Mrs Joe Gargery and Mr Joe Gargery. Joe Gargery is related to Pip because he married Pip’s sister. He’s a blacksmith and he is very strong and well built. In appearance Joe is, “a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites.” And this would have seemed humorous to Victorian readers, because the description was more of a type for women. The way Joe talks shows us a lot about his personality. For instance, when he says, “She’s a-coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you.” This shows more proof of his caring personality since the ‘jack-towel’ is to make the ‘Tickler’ hurt him less.
The funniest thing about Joe in chapter 2 is that he shows a great deal of respect to his wife by saying ‘Mrs Joe’ instead of her first name. Other people should be saying this to her, for respect but it isn’t normal for the husband to address his wife like this. Another indication of her character is given in the words, “and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles” and this would make the reader think of her bitter personality. “Mrs Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether t was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap” this would give the reader the idea that she is an extremely hard working person while also having the distinct features of men in the 19th century who have dark hair and dark eyes.
The funniest thing about Mrs Joe in chapter two is when she treats both Pip and Mr Joe like a child. She gives them both a really bad tasting medicine, “Joe got off with half a Pint.” This is funny also because it makes you wonder, why did he even think about marry her in the first place?
The mystifying character gets introduced very dramatically. We hear him before we see him, and Dickens hold back quite a lot of information about him. A few questions asked could be, ‘Why has he a manacle on his leg?’, ‘How did he escape?’, ‘Is he really that bad a person’ and, ‘What has the convict done to be put into a prison ship?’.
At the end of chapter two the audience are left with a cliffhanger. Young Pip runs off into the darkness to find the convict and consequently putting himself in a dangerous situation. The readers will be asking themselves, ‘What will happen?’ all through out the chapter.
I think that the reasons for why ‘Great Expectations’ is so successful is because Charles Dickens takes the meaning of something and then makes it its opposite, like Mr and Mrs Joe Gargery. And also because he uses the young Pip to exaggerate an event so much that it turns in to a great joke, like he thought that he was going to jai, for stealing from his sister!