How does Dickens(TM)s create a sense of Magwitch(TM)s character?

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Great Expectations

How does Dickens’s create a sense of Magwitch’s character?

Magwitch is introduced to the story on the first few pages of the book in chapter 1. Before Magwitch is introduced Dickens creates a feeling of mystery and leaves you with a sense of unknown as he describes the churchyard in which Pip and Magwitch meet. “This bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard”. In the first sentence he talks about the churchyard, he portrays it as an uninviting, drab and dreary place, which has not been looked after very well, this gives you an idea that it is very desolate and not many people go there. It is in this graveyard where Pip, who is visiting his family’s graves, encounters Magwitch who ties in very well with the graveyard setting. It is in this location, you expect to find a character like Magwitch, a rough looking escape convict with iron holding his legs together and shabby clothes on, as if he has risen from one of the graves. It is everybody’s nightmare to be in a dark graveyard with the wind howling in the background to come across a dangerous character whose first words are, “Hold your noise, keep still you little devil or I’ll cut your throat!” In this first sentence Magwitch is represented as a hazardous character that Pip has unwillingly got himself involved with. The way in which Dickens’s uses direct speech to convey the sense in which Magwitch speaks – which is very bluntly, there isn’t a lot of commentary in between the exchanging of words between Magwitch and Pip, and the words are self -explanatory and are spoken in a very blunt and violent manner.

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  “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 ...

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