“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……….” From this sentence you can tell that Magwitch has been on the run for quite a while and looks worn out and tired. Even though Dickens depicts Magwitch as a dangerous man there is a sense of helplessness about him, as if to extract a bit of sympathy from the reader. Dickens’s doesn’t want you to be scared of Magwitch just weary of him. Magwitch does not ask Pip to rob a bank but to just bring him some food and water and a file to get rid of the iron on his legs. Dickens emphasises the fact that he is of a different social class as if he is trying to victimise him. Today we wouldn’t comment on whether someone was wearing a hat or not as people from every social class do, however in his description of Magwitch Dickens’s says “A
man, with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head.” He is saying that because he is not wearing a hat he is from a lower class.
In the first chapter of the book Magwitch is threatening Pip with his life if he doesn’t do what he says. He is not a very loveable character and the scenery just makes him seen as a very sinister character.
The last sentence of the chapter shows Pip running away from the graveyard frightened and scared and with a sense of unease as he is going to see Magwitch again but he doesn’t quite know what is going to happen. It is this feeling of mystery and unease that is related to Magwitch throughout the whole of the book and is felt not only by Pip but also by the reader. Characters are never just encountered for one chapter then just disappear, they always come back with a story behind them. Characters are never wasted in Dickens’s stories.
The next time Magwitch reappears in the story is in Chapter 39 when Pip is twenty-three and is accustomed to his new lifestyle as “gentleman” in London, which was all provided for him by his unknown benefactor Magwitch. It is in this chapter that we see a different side to Magwitch, which is very different to the ogre like personality he had in chapter one.
Like chapter one the setting in which Magwitch appears again is very dark and gloomy. “It was wretched weather; stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London… Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.” Dickens uses the weather to build up a threatening atmosphere and the repetition helps highlight this feeling of a threat. ‘Heavy veil’ suggests that there is something to be concealed, it hints at something to be revealed or discovered. These circumstances are very much like the ones in which Pip and Magwitch met all those years ago in chapter 1.
Like in chapter one Magwitch creeps up on Pip takes him by surprise and startles him .”…I was listening and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it when I heard a footstep on the stair……There is someone down there is there not?”, “yes” said a voice from the darkness beneath”
Magwitch announces himself and takes off his worn out looking coat, looking just as he had done when he was an escape convict. He does not seem so threatening as he did before and exposes himself as Pip’s
benefactor. He does not seem the same aggressive man as he did before
Which bemuses the reader a little and proves to the reader he is not a bad man and the only reason he threatened Pip was because he didn’t trust him.
“I reluctantly gave him my hands. He grasped them heartily raised them to his lips, kissed them and still held them, ‘You acted Nobly my boy, Noble Pip! And I have never forgot it”. This makes you think that Magwitch was never a horrible character, he was just afraid. Dickens highlights the fact that Magwitch is still wearing the same shabby clothes as he had done all those years back and made Pip the young “gentleman” that all men aspire to be .Also the way in which Magwitch speaks gives away his social class, “Do I tell it fur you to feel a obligation ?”.
From chapter 39 to the end of the book the relationship between Pip and Magwitch develops and after Pip gets over the fact that he has become a gentlemen with dirty money he then warms to Magwitch, who unlike before is portrayed as a very loveable character. Like most of Dickens characters there is always a second personality to them, which he creates a sense of from the scenery at the time the character is present to the clothes and how the character behaves.