Back to the convict it is now time to look at his appearance when he first meets pip in the churchyard. His first appearance is to be a ‘fearful man, all in course grey, with a great iron on his leg.’ This gives us a fully clear picture that the man Pip has bumped into is the convict named Magwitch. ‘A man with no hat, and broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. To me this is very strange considering he has no hat, I think a hat would be a good thing for the convict considering he has escaped and will need to be unseen by people even though deserted in a bewildered churchyard. Therefore I think that he has used the old rag round is head maybe to not make himself so revealing. Dickens does then further on describe Magwitch to be ‘A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles.’ Seeing this you can tell dickens has made this long sentence obvious that it is what Pip describes the convict look like. Dickens uses excessive use of the conduction ‘and’ as a simple description of how a child would describe him. ‘A man who limped, and shivered and glared, and growled.’ Dickens here gives a wide range of visual verbs to gives us the finishing touches towards the convicts appearance. The descriptions of the convict make him out to be a very evil being who has escaped form prison and is ready to get his hands on anything he can.
We then come back to Miss Havisham the woman we presume to be a very wealthy person. ‘ In an armchair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shal I ever see.’ This opening sentence Dickens uses repetition to describe in the sentence how miss Havisham is sat in the armchair. ‘She was dressed in rich materials – stains, and lace, and silks – all of white.’ This description of miss Havisham gives us the idea that she is actually a rich and wealthy woman from the texture of her clothes. Dickens uses the word white a number of times which is symbolic to what Miss Havisham is wearing. ‘She had a long white veil dependant from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white.’ This quote relates back to when she was abandoned at the altar by her husband to be. The impression given is that, Miss Havisham was still wearing the veil which I think gives a clear idea that she was heartbroken about what had happened to her that day, and hasn’t got over it for the past 20 years. ‘She had but one shoe on’ this seems very strange because earlier on in the novel it describes how Miss Havisham is abandoned at the altar and would have made her feel like she had bad luck. Therefore a shoe on a table is a sign of bad luck and maybe it is representing what has happened to Miss Havisham. ‘With her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer book.’ In this quote it really sums up about the marriage with Miss Havisham because all the things that are mentioned are to do with being married for example, Most of the time brides wear gloves on their wedding day, Brides would definitely have some sort of flowers which they would carry round with them, and most of all the prayer book is the biggest sign towards a marriage and if Miss Havisham still has the book with her it must have been a hard time for her. Dieckens then later on describes Miss Havisham that little bit more ‘I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress.’ Dickens makes us now think that because she has withered with the dress that she has lived in it ever since her wedding day.’ ‘No brightness left’ I think this means she has no brightness left in her life anymore that maybe too many things have gone wrong for her and she cannot be bothered with her life anymore, because there is nothing good left in it. All these quotes which have been given about Miss Havisham makes us feel very sorry for her, she is woman who is just pure of bad luck.
But we find out Miss havisham is not as nice as she seems and that even though her heart was broken, she feels the need to bring her fostered child Estella up to be her apprentice into braking a mans heart so that they can see how upset she really is, and how it affected her. We then come back to Magwitch (the convict) who at first seems to be the bad and the evil. But it is not until later on that we find out that he is not as bad as we first interpreted. As he becomes older he owns a farm in Australia and earns lots and lots of money. He then comes back over to see Pip as man and thanks him for the favours that he once did for him back in the churchyard.
The main thing which is noticeable in the novel is the language used by the two different class of characters. First we have Magwtich (the convict) ‘Hold your noise’ this is a commandment shouted at Pip by the convict demanding Pip to be quiet. ‘Keep still you little devil or I’ll cut your throat’ This is another commandment from the convict but also it has the reader on the edge of their seat because it makes you feel something very horrid will happen to Pip if he makes a wrong, or says something wrong. ‘Tell us your name’ again we have another sense of something bad about to happen to Pip as the convict demands his name. ‘Give it some mouth’ this could mean maybe the convict is maybe a bit def and cannot properly hear Pip so he demands for him to speak up. ‘Show us where you live’ The convict comes at Pip with many question but with a demanding meaning in it. Dickens uses a exclamation mark at the end of every few words of which the convict says, which also shows he has an aggressive tone towards Pip. We also see that the convict maybe does have good speaking ability the way he uses shortened down words, and wants a straight answer for everything he demands to Pip for example ‘Who d’ye live with.’, ‘Now lookee here.’ These type of short sentences show that the convict doesn’t have very good speaking ability.
Miss Havisham is therefore again very different. ‘Come nearer, let me look at you. Come close’ her first tone that she uses against Pip I think is to see how Pip reacts with her. She is commanding to Pip and letting him know that she is in control. ‘Look at me.’ ‘You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born.’ Again Miss Havisham is questioning Pip testing his boundaries to see how he reacts to her. ‘Do you know what I touch here?’ (she said laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.) she is indicating to Pip her heart which has been broken, she has questioned Pip to see how he reacts. ‘ I have done with men and women’ This quote by Miss Havisham is showing that she is really bothered about what happened to her that day of her wedding, because not only is she telling Pip she has had it with men, she has now also mentioned women. This could maybe mean that she had friends that she has lost over the years. These kind of things that Miss Havisham says makes the reader pitiful towards her. But she is not the kind of person we should feel sorry for n show sympathy to, because behind it all she is really just a messed up woman who has had troubles and is trying to take it out on every man she can, but using her fostered daughter, Estella to be the culprit.