Discuss the figure of the 'gentleman' in Dickens' 'Great Expectations', contextualising the novel as much as possible.
Discuss the figure of the 'gentleman' in Dickens' 'Great Expectations', contextualising the novel as much as possible The concept of the nineteenth century gentleman was always somewhat confused. Whilst members of the aristocracy immediately qualified, in the age of industrial progression and with people outside the upper class coming into great amounts of wealth, there seemed to be a need to define who did or didn't qualify. To be considered a gentleman meant you had to have a certain social status; to simply behave with dignity, manners and respect was nothing if you weren't projecting the right social image, because only then would you be seen as an individual worthy of recognition. The focus of 'Great Expectations' is upon Philip Pirrip, or 'Pip'. As the novel is told from his perspective as he recounts the events of his youth, he takes the role of two characters; Pip the protagonist, whose activities make up the bulk of the book and Pip the narrator, who provides an older and wiser perspective on the actions of his youth. The two characters are made distinguishable from one another with great care by Dickens, as he makes sure to give them each an individual voice; the older narrator has perspective and maturity, whilst the younger protagonist gives his immediate thoughts and feelings on what happens to him as it happens. This is most evident in the novel's early
lord of the flies
Chapter-1 The whole scheme of Golding's writing is based on the concept of situation, even though he has varied approaches in his novels. 'Lord of The Flies', the first novel, has incorporated some moral issues and has thus drawn on an indigenous tradition of sober moral enquiry. Like any religious writer, Golding, has treated the question of 'Good' and 'Evil' and the theme of original sin in allegorical method. In his own way, Golding tries to bring home the idea that man by birth is sinful. As though a moralist, he points out the fallen nature of man. It is this thesis that attempts to construct in this novel. He has done a critical investigation into a primitive spectrum of human experience and the question of religious and moral aspects comes to the fore front. In a way the implied argument of the novel seems to be specific and arresting because we may agree at the end of the novel that if we scratch the civilized man a little, we find the savage inside. It is beyond doubt that 'Lord of The Flies' is based on and reshaped from the situation of Ballantyne's 'Coral Island'. In his interview with Frank Kermode, Golding has stated that 'Lord of The Flies' is in fact a realistic view of the Ballantyne situation. But what is unique with this novel is that it is cast in a modern atmosphere and it deals with the contemporary predicament. Golding invents a new
Flight - creative writitng.
John McGrath Assignment 8: 'Flight' There he was alone in the corner of the garden leaning backwards on his deckchair. The sun is shining and the weather is sweet. The type of weather he was looking forward to for his pigeons. They hated the cold. He never seemed the same without his favourite granddaughter, like there was something missing. After all he had only himself and his memories to keep him company. Nobody bothered about him anymore, only his daughter, who to be honest he did not appreciate. He found her attitude towards him annoying and condescending. She treats him like a child. Nobody enjoys being treated like a child, being bossed around all the time, and being patronised. He was contemplating on the past. He had not seen his granddaughter since the day she left home and moved on with her life. She is married now, nobody was there to see the big day, just her and Steven. He began to think back to the day when he realised he had lost her forever... ...I can remember that day as if it was yesterday, the sense of the garden was warm and welcoming, the trees were bristling in the wind and the pigeons were fluttering in their dovecote. Everything was going fine. I was in the garden playing with my bird, admiring its plumage. I loved all of my birds. But this one was my favourite out of them all. It was a special bird to me, I had had it for over five years and I
Great expectations
In chapter one of Great Expectations, Dickens sets the scene with vivid description to convey the mood of the area. The 'meshes' or marshes form an important part of the atmosphere as the character, Pip, is introduced. The narrative is related by Pip himself, allowing us to see the environment, characters and incidents through his eyes. Pip tells the reader that because he could not pronounce his full name 'I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip'. The fact that Pip himself tells us that his surroundings are 'bleak' and 'overgrown with nettles' provides us with evidence that he grew up in a harsh environment - obviously not an ideal place for a child to be raised. Pip's behavior in the graveyard gives us clues about the circumstances in which he was raised. Pips description of his younger, deceased brothers 'that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their pockets' shows us that he has little or nothing to channel his imagination, showing the reader a sense of loneliness connected with Pip. We know from Pip's childish descriptions of his parents that his older sister, Mrs. Joe, has never told him about them. The fact that Pip believes his mother was called 'Also Georgiana, wife of the above' provides the reader with evidence that Mrs. Joe has no time for him, as she has not corrected his obvious mistake. The narrator also
Characterization in Dickens' Hard Times.
Characterization in Dickens' Hard Times A firm character basis is the foundation upon which any good novel is built. For an allegorical novel, Dickens has a surprisingly complex character foundation. The characters in Hard Times have both the simplistic characteristics of a character developed for allegorical purposes, as well as the intricate qualities of "real" people. These characters think and feel like we do and react to their situations in the same way that most of us would. These attributes are what give the characters life and allow us to relate to their decisions. Three characters in Hard Times; James Harthouse, Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool, exemplify this realistic quality and each is representative of a different social division - divisions of upper, middle and lower class. Each class, because of social interaction or absence of the same, creates different dilemmas. The upper class, as holds true in reality, is the smallest of the three categories and, consequently, has its own unique problems. James Harthouse, a characteristic member of the upper class, comes to Coketown to search for something else to bide his time with. As an aristocratic member of society, one can become stuck in the furrows of life when hours of daily labour are not a part of that person's regimen. Here is an example of some of the extravagant escapades that Harthouse embarks on,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandand What Was Found There.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and What Was Found There "'Curiouser and curiouser!'cried Alice" (Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 9). At the time she was speaking of the fact that her body seemed to be growing to immense proportions before her very eyes; however, she could instead have been speaking about the entire nature of Lewis Carroll's classic works Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. At first glance, the novels seem easy enough to understand. They are simple children's stories filled with fantastical language and wonderful worlds. They follow the basic genre of nearly all children's work, they are written in simple and clear language, feature a young hero and an amazing, unbelievable cast of characters, are set in places of mystery and illusion, and seem far too nonsensical and unusual for adults to enjoy. Even their author, Lewis Carroll, believed them to be children's stories. Yet Carroll and generations of parents and children have been wrong. While these stories may seem typical children's fare, they are distinctly different. Their symbolism, content, and message make the Alice books uniquely intended for adults. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in 1832 in Victorian England. He was a mathematics professor, but he had a very peculiar dual identity. "Most of the time he was C. L. Dodgson, the shy,
Oppression and frenzy: causes of the French Revolution.
OPPRESSION AND FRENZY: CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."1 The quote describes the spirit of the era in which this story takes place. The age is marked by competing and contradictory attitudes. Whether it was the best of times or the worst of times depended on one's point of view. Yet, these times resembles the present period in which Charles Dickens writes A Tale of Two Cities. In fact, Dickens' novel was written as a political commentary to inform the people of the Victorian era of the causes of the French Revolution. These causes can be divided into two major categories: hatred for the nobility, and an atmosphere of paranoia, fueled by the sans-culottes, which can be seen in calls for violence. Evidence for hatred of the nobility is quite extensive. Not seldom aristocrats fell victim to crowd violence, often being mutilated in the process. Nobles inspired resentment and retaliation because they claimed that their political and social distinctions derived from their high birth. Just so, the people of Paris provided much of the force for radical action in the French Revolution. In France, before the revolution, the social structure had two extremes. The peasants hated the aristocrats for their power and money. For the aristocracy it seemed like the best of times but many lived in a world insulated from what the reality
The importance of the Fens as a surrounding context in Graham Swift's Waterland
The importance of the Fens as a surrounding context in Graham Swift's Waterland In Waterland the Fens play a vital role, they become an insular environment that appears to have little connection with the real world. They introduce many themes and motifs that recur throughout the novel, illustrating emotions and psychological states, and because they act less as a geographical setting than as an active force, their status is enhanced to that of a character in the novel. The majority of the novel is set in the Fens. I believe the Fens as a surrounding context are crucial in the novel, their importance is illustrated by the immediacy with which Tom Crick introduces the reader to the location of the story, just seven lines in he says ' we lived in a fairy-tale place. In a lock-keeper's cottage, by a river, in the middle of the Fens.' The juxtaposition of imprecision, 'a fairy-tale place', and exactness, 'in a lock keeper's cottage...' immediately establishes the setting as both a place of imaginative freedom, and a place of historical investigation, again illustrated a few pages later by the phrase, 'a fairy-tale must have a setting, a setting which, like the settings of all good fairy-tales, must be both palpable and unreal.' The juxtaposition introduces the reader to two different literary styles that Swift interweaves throughout the novel, the first being the lyrical,
Bakhtin claims that chronotopes "are the organising centres for the fundamental narrative events of a novel ... It can be said without qualification that to them belongs the meaning that shapes the narrative" how accurate an assessment is this?
Bakhtin claims that chronotopes "are the organising centres for the fundamental narrative events of a novel ... It can be said without qualification that to them belongs the meaning that shapes the narrative" how accurate an assessment is this? Throughout this essay I am going to be selective in Bakhtin's theory, not because it isn't beneficial but because it is so detailed and compact. I intend to compare the chronotopes to the structure of Dickens's novels, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. Throughout I will extract quotations from the text but oftern I will make detail references as more than one quotation is needed. Bakhtin uses examples from Greek Romance novels to focus the theory on in order that I will have to drawn comparisons between the Greek romance and Dickens's texts. The chronotope is imperative in a text as it defines the genre. Bakhtin uses the term Chronotope to describe the 'inseparability of space and time'1. It is the connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships which, in literature, are inseparable from each other and are continuously shape by emotions and morals. Constantly we structure our lives around times we have to be located in places, what time we are meeting and where. Time to us is order and something which subconsciously controls us, pushing us to meet its hours. This is the unchanged within a novel and Dickens's narratives are
The Son’s Veto and Survival
Carl Payne 10H Date: November 2000 Candidate Number: Centre Number: 63203 The Son's Veto and Survival Wide Reading Assignment The Son's Veto and Survival are set in vastly dissimilar times. The Son's Veto was published in the late nineteenth century (eighteen ninety-five) and the story Survival was first published in the mid twentieth century (nineteen fifty-six) but it is set a great deal in the future. The story Survival is a science fiction story. The author of the gripping short story Survival is John Wyndham and the author of the other story; The Son's Veto is Thomas Hardy. The two stories are very much stories of the authors times. Both stories, The Son's Veto and Survival were supremely challenging, The Son's Veto more so. They were complex due to the extensive range of vocabulary, and the language used. The sheer length of the two stories also enlarged the complexity of them. The principal character in The Son's Veto is Sophy, whom is a young woman that worked as a maid for Mister Twycott. People also contemplated Sophy as a woman with a story; 'She was generally believed to be a woman with a story - an innocent one, but a story of some sort or another'. The chief character in the story Survival is Alice. In The