Great Expectations

Great expectations

My essay is about Charles dickens’s well known classic Great Expectations.

In my essay I am going to talk about how dickens uses setting to enhance our understanding of the plot and the characters involved in chapters one and two of Great Expectations.

In chapter one of Great expectations it opens with a description of pips father, it then goes on to describe where pip is at, emotionally although where he is at could give some clue to what is in his mind,

Dickens gives a full description as follows; “to five little stone lozenges about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine-who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle- I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.”

This then follows to a great description of where pip is, dickens really pulls you in to the sense of reality with his description of the surroundings (the setting).

He offers a sense of realism to his writing to invoke a reaction from his audience.

This is a passage taken from chapter one of Great Expectations, telling of the settings in Great detail.

“Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My most vivid and broad impression of the identity of the things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Phillip Pirrip, late of his parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Rodger, infant children of the afore said, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which h wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was pip.

The next part of the story tells of an escaped convicted named magwitch. Back in the 1800’s the prisoners were kept in iron chains around their ankles and wrists, dickens tells of this in the way that he portrays magwitch’s arrival.

Here is a quotation taken from the story about magwitch’s appearance;

“Hold your noise! Cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch.

“Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat” this already gives magwitch a rougher and more fearful approach, which is proven ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Here is a quotation taken from the story about magwitch’s appearance;

“Hold your noise! Cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch.

“Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat” this already gives magwitch a rougher and more fearful approach, which is proven by the in-depth description that follows;

‘A fearful man, all in course Gray, with a great iron on his leg.’

A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied around his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.’

This description, of magwitch is truly insightful, in to the character Dickens wants him to be.

The roughness and the dirtiness, just the plain sight of this man would make your skin crawl.

Dickens used his ability to make his imagination become reality in the portrayal of magwitch’s character.

The way dickens describes magwitch, it is though, he was an escapee of some sort, and we know not yet what that is from, although the irons on his leg would hint towards a prisoner.

This automatically, grips our attention, and makes us feel compelled to read on, we want to know if this man was a prisoner of some sort, how did he manage to escape and why would he have gone to the church?

These questions are all answered later on in Great Expectations.

The next part of this chapter is intriguing, it tells of how pip informs magwitch of his unfortunate losses, when he is asked by magwitch where his parents are, this leads to a somewhat compassion from magwitch although it is carefully hidden among the text.

Next magwitch asks pip, where infact did he live and who with, when asked this pip replies, he lives down in the town with his sister and her husband Joe gargery the blacksmith, when magwitch hears this he seems to be happy, he asks pip if he knows what whittles are and what a file is, and then tells pip to get them and bring them to him, presumably this is so he can take the irons off of his legs, when pip readily agrees in order to be released from this mans grip, magwitch is seen to be running towards the church porch again, and in to the night.

The way in which magwitch is portrayed at the beginning of the story, does not prepare you for his untimely change nearer the end, as it is eventually him that sends pip off for a finer education, and helps him try to win over Estella’s heart.

Magwitch is not the only character in the story that dickens has managed to describe to us so graphically. He has also managed to give the audience a visual of what Miss Havisham is like.

Dickens tells of Miss Havisham as a jilted old lady, sat in a darken room, with a wedding feast still laid out on the table, covered in cobwebs and spiders, while she sits in her chair watching it decay, as she herself deteriorates while she sits in her yellowed wedding dress and her own faeces.

This graphic detailing is what makes Miss Havisham come across as a somewhat bitter old lady, if dickens was to say she was sitting in her chair knitting then the whole imagery of the novel would become different.

Miss Havisham comes across to the readers, as an unpleasant women, but back in the 1800’s when this novel would have been written, to be a women who was not married and still owned a fortune, it would have be frowned upon. The fact that at the beginning of dickens descriptions of her, he describes her being jilted, this automatically makes the reader assume that she is not married therefore; her fortune and status were to be frowned upon by others. This in itself could be the sole reason why Miss Havisham comes across the way she does.

Without dickens use of graphic description, Great Expectations would not have been able to appeal to its intended audience, and therefore would not have been as successful as it was. Dickens really does bring the story to life, and make it seem to the reader that they themselves are actually there, and can actually see these things happening for themselves.

We can only assume that ‘Great Expectations’ was a way of Dickens showing part of his life, through novel, and that he himself could have actually been pip.

This could have been why his description was a graphic as it was, but either way it brings a sense of realism and life to the novel.

Alana Ringshall