How does dickens create an effective opening to great expectations ?

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Alex Haigh

Mrs Walls 10F1

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How does Dickens create an effective opening to ‘Great Expectations’?

Throughout the setting dickens establishes a miserable, frightening mood, he does this by describing the landscape with comments like, ‘dark flat wilderness’ and ‘this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the church yard’. This works because words like ‘bleak’, ‘dark’ and ‘overgrown’, suggest a place that is uncared for and an unpleasant place to be. ‘Distant savage lair’ is another descriptive phrase he uses to show us that the setting is a dark, decollate and a depressing landscape. The way he describes the sea he makes us think of it as a scary ‘lair’ home to a savage creature, which adds to the scary atmosphere. ‘The marshes were just a long black horizontal line’ and ‘The sky’ … ‘a row of long angry red lines’ are two sentences that dickens uses to describe the atmosphere ; also both colours that are used sugest dull, scary, evil and angry mood. Lastly ‘A gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which once held a pirate’

Dickens creates an effective opening to great expectations by introducing interesting characters that entertain and that we won’t forget. Dickens has created two very different characters, Pip and Magwitch. Pip is a young boy that is timid; the name pip suits the character because pips are small and harmless, just like him. Dickens describes pip with phrases like ‘small bundle of shivers’, ‘undersized, and not strong’ these descriptive phrases make pip sound even more vulnerable, to attack. The other character is Magwitch; he is older and appears a lot more threatening. Dickens describes Magwitch with comments like ‘fearful’, ‘broken shoes’, ‘old, cut’ and ‘growled’. These comments make Magwitch sound like a scary aggressive man.  As well as that Dickens tells us that he was wearing, ‘course grey with a great iron on his leg’ this tells us that he is an escaped convict, which would make most people fear him.

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Magwitch’s sudden appearance startles pip. ‘Hold your noise cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves’ ‘keep still you little devil or ill cut your throat!’ This would have startled pip because Magwitch who is a intimidating man, suddenly appears shouting and threatening to kill him. As well as his sudden appearance dickens gives him short aggressive sentences such as, ‘tell us your name! Quick.’ which makes him sound even more threatening. Magwitch uses expressions like ‘give it mouth’ and ‘pint out the place’, to a Victorian reader that would appear common, indecent and ...

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