Magwitch is similar to Miss Haversham because they both wanted to make points to society this is because Magwitch wanted to show the world that even if he couldn’t be a gentleman he could certainly own one, and Miss Haversham wanted to show everyone society with Estella because she makes Estella make as many men as unhappy as possible because a man broke her heart.
In chapter Pip is a young boy of seven or eight who is in the graveyard visiting his family’s grave on Christmas Eve. This immediately makes the reader feel sorry for Pip because her is alone and missing his family. There is pathetic fallacy in the opening sentences of both chapters to set the scene. They are very similar because it’s stormy and windy so it gives the reader a sense of foreboding and an ominous feeling that something bad is about to happen. Each chapter starts off making us sympathise with Pip because he is forlorn and lonely. In chapter 1 he is alone because he is an orphan looking at his family’s graves and he is alone in chapter 39 because he is by himself on is 23rd birthday and feels as if life has just passed him by and he doesn’t have anything to for it or his accomplishments.
Dickens descries the graveyard as “a savage lair” and in chapter 39 Dickens describes Magwitch as looking like a beast so he creates an allusion. Dickens makes Magwitch still very vicious looking throughout both chapters, but in 39 you sympathise more with him because you know that he a kind man at heart. I also felt sympathetic with Magwitch because in chapter one he says that h took the pork pie when it was Pip so that Pip didn’t get into trouble, this makes the reader think that there must still be some goodness in him if he admits to something that he didn’t do just to keep Pip out of trouble. Repetition and alteration are used in both chapters like in chapter 1 Dickens says “glared and growled” and in chapter 39 he says “mud, mud, mud” to suggest to the reader that its heavy and feeling that your “bogged down” and is onomatopoeia.
Magwitch was a threat for Pip when he was a boy and is a threat to him now that he is a man. This is because both times that Pip has seen him, Magwitch startles Pip. Magwitch was a big threat when Pip was a boy because he was young and vulnerable but now in chapter 39, several years have passed and Pip is still a vulnerable young man. Magwitch remains the same in both chapters because the first one he is a terrifying convict whose behaviour was that of an animal more than a humans and he is described as a terrible beast but in chapter 39 Pip think of Magwitch as an animal and is repulsed by him.
In chapter 1 Magwitch is short with Pip because he doesn’t want to be found out by the police. In chapter 39 he is similar because he only uses monosyllabic words like “yes” and “no” and he is described in metonymy i.e. first you hear footsteps, then a voice, then a man and then a body is described.
Dickens uses money as a theme in both chapters because in the first Chapter Pip is being turned over by Magwitch to find out how much money he had but in Chapter 39 the “tables have turned” because now Pip is being given by Magwitch. Pip learns that to fulfil his great expectations he must have money.
We learn that in the early nineteenth century the mortality rate was very low because all of Pips family are dead when he is only approximately seven years old. Crime and punishment were also quite bad because there were two men on the loose from the hulks; this means that there must have been a high crime rate because there were a lot of men on the hulks. In chapter 2 it is not described what either of the convicts did but later on in the book you do and Magwitch is given a heavy punishment for only fraud that was committed, also it show that the higher up I society you were the lighter the sentence that you got because Compeyson was the brains behind most of the fraudulent work and Magwitch only accompanied him so he therefore shouldn’t have been given such a gruesome sentence as Compeyson but because Compeyson was a gentleman he was incarcerated but didn’t receive such a bad sentence as Magwitch did. This shows a highly imbalanced society because it meant that your birthright was the social standing that you would have all of your life.
Dickens writes for all types of readers because he opened it with a chilling chapter, this would interest the readers that were interested in stories like Frankenstein as it was written around the same era and the first chapter is the one that Dickens had to write to interest and enthral the reader. The characters in the novel are very moral like in Jane Eyre by the Bronte’s which was a popular book being read at the time, because Pip is very moral in the sense that he keeps to his word and whenever he does something wrong i.e. when he is rude to Joe he feels guilty about it.
Lavinia Engleman
