Great Expectations Effectiveness of chapter 1

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How effective are the opening and closing chapters of ‘Great Expectations.’

Opening Chapter

The novel, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens was written between December 1860 and August 1861, and was published in instalments in a magazine. Charles Dickens was known as a ‘social reformer’ and many of his novels reflect on poverty, justice and punishment in novels such as Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and Great Expectations. Charles Dickens was also concerned about prison systems and he campaigned long and hard against public executions, using his fame to bring the horrors of the situation to light.

The first chapter of Great Expectations establishes important information in terms of character, action, and the plot which aims to entice the reader to read on. Charles Dickens used a lot of suspense in the novel; in addition he made each of the instalments end with a cliff-hanger to persuade readers to buy the next issue, which would definitely gives the reader a purpose for buying the following part of Great Expectations. Great Expectations can be also considered semi-autobiographical of Charles Dickens as it is based on his own experience of life and people. The novel is written in the style of a bildungsroman.*

The first chapter of Great Expectations introduces us to the young protagonist Philip Pirrip, who was known as Pip because he could not pronounce his full name ‘I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.’  Pip who is about seven at the opening of the novel also serves as the story’s narrator looking back on his own story as an adult. With this two-level approach, Charles  Dickens leads the reader though Pip’s  life in childhood with the immediacy and surprise of a young  narrator while at the same time guiding as an omnipotent narrator who knows how it will turn out . As the reader we are personally introduced to Pip as if we were in a pleasant conversation with him “I give Pirrip as my father’s name...”   We find out that Pip was looking at the tombstones of his parents and his younger brothers in the middle of the cemetery. As the reader we immediately feel sorry for Pip, his parents and younger siblings have passed away leaving only him remaining and his older sister Mrs Joe Gargery, who is married to a blacksmith Joe Gargery.

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*bildungsroman – the story of a man or a woman in their quest for maturity. Usually starting from childhood and ending in the main character’s eventual adult-hood.

Pip is an imaginative character who tries to picture what his dead family members would look like by the shape and letterings of their tombstones “Also Georgiana Wife of The Above, ‘I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.” The death of Pip’s five brothers tells the reader that there was a high infant mortality rate especially amongst the poor “To the five little stone lozenges, each about ...

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