Great expectations coursework Essay

My essay is going to be about the 1876 edition novel ‘Great Expectations. ‘ The author of this novel is Charles Dickens. When the novel opens we meet Pip as a rather young child. Pip is the narrator as well as the main character. This is known as the first person. Pip as an adult talks about Pip as a child. He talks about his life as a child and how it was a struggle without his parents being around to help him. This makes it interesting to read. Dickens creates sympathy for Pip by talking about his dead parents. â€Å"As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any image of either of them. † This suggests that Pip never saw his parents because he was young when they died. Pip also tries to create an image of what they looked like. Another way Dickens creates sympathy is by talking about Pip’s dead brothers. â€Å"They all had been born on their backs with there hands in their trouser pockets. † This makes us think of them in a childish way like the young Pip. In the 19th century people used to die commonly so if they read this novel they wouldn’t suffer any sympathy because the death rate was regular. If a person read this novel in the 20 century they would feel sympathy because the death rate is much less and we are not used to children dying anymore. Dickens knew what a poor existence was like as a child because he had been through it all. He came from a working class family. In his school the teacher paid particular consideration to Dickens because he was making incredible progress but he was forced to leave school at the age of 12 and go labour in a factory because his parents were in enormous debt. To write this book Dickens got his sympathy from his early days. What he saw in his time made him want to write about how life wasn’t fair. The opening chapters are good at getting us to feel all sorts of emotions. The way Dickens gets the readers awareness is he creates a tense, terrifying setting. The reader then knows something dreadful is going to take place so he reads on. Dickens describes how frightening the setting is. â€Å"The small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was Pip. † This suggests that he is extremely terrified of the graveyard that he is in. Dickens describes the graveyard as a hiding place for people. â€Å"And that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea. † This suggests that the grave yard can be used as a hiding place because of its darkness and emptiness. All of this makes the reader really scared so that we can feel the same as Pip. Dickens was especially renowned for the good way he created his characters. We meet one of his bloodcurdling characters in this novel. Dickens describes the character as a fearful man, all in course grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man who had been â€Å"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. † This suggests that the man had been through an awful lot to get to where is. He also wanted to really escape from the prison that he was held in. We know that he had been to prison because of the great iron on his leg. We also know that he had been beaten by stones, drenched in water, smothered in mud, slashed by flints and unpleasantly cold. I can feel what he is feeling because of the words Dickens uses. Dickens uses dialogue to state where his characters come from and how their personality is. The convict uses dialect language. â€Å"Show us where you live, pint out the place. † This tells us that the convict doesn’t use correct English language instead of saying ‘point’ he says ‘pint’ missing out the ‘o’. this tells me that he is from a working class not a middle class like Estella or other ladies and gentlemen. Dickens is very intelligent the way he creates his characters names. This helps use to discover what the characters are like and what part they play. Mrs Joe Gargery takes on her husbands name to show other people that she’s the one who obeys her husband. The reader sees a different side. Mrs Joe Gargery is the one in charge and her husband obeys her. Dickens is using ironic humour here to make us laugh at the situation. I liked the first two chapters of the novel that I studied because it was very thrilling to examine about how existence was like in the historic days. I liked the way Dickens wrote this novel because he described the background in a lot of detail.