Sympathy for Magwitch in Great Expectations

Great Expectations - sympathy for Magwitch.

We sympathise for Magwitch a great deal in this book even though he is

intimidating at first. As we see his softer side we begin to like him

and are touched by the gratitude he shows to Pip later on in the book

and the strong friendship they form with each other. The way Magwitch

is exploited by the legal system upsets us a great deal and increases

the pity we have for him. Dickens' methods of satirizing the legal

system and contradicting the stereotypes of convicts in the nineteenth

century are very affective in making the reader feel pathos for

Magwitch.

In chapter 3 we begin to overlook Magwitch's appearance and

threatening manner in the earlier scene because we see he is a human

being with a sense of humour and real feelings like everyone else and

not the tough menace he made himself out to be.

When Pip first catches sight of Magwitch again he appears to be in a

terrible state and looks very weak:

" I half expected to see him drop down before my face and die of deadly cold"

Dickens has changed Magwitch from an intimidating criminal to a

helpless and fragile man. This is the first time that one starts to

pity Magwitch, and to see his softer and more human side.

We also see how desperate Magwitch is for food:

"His eyes looked so awfully hungry, too, that

when I handed him the file and laid it down on

the grass, it occurred to me he would have

tried to eat it, if he had not seen my bundle."

His need for food makes us sympathise for him even more and the choice

of, "awfully hungry" makes his situation even more awful. Pip's vivid

imagination as a child is a very effective tool in stirring sympathy

because it is so unprecedented, "it occurred to...

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...s for much longer and that they will

be separated. It also makes Magwitch seem like a helpless child who is

being comforted, rather than a terrible convict.

Dickens did not only satirizes the judicial system to make the reader

feel sorry for Magwitch but he also does it in hope that he would make

people reading the book at the time question the judicial system. He

uses Magwitch to make them feel as if they have a connection with the

convicts who are victims in the system. He hoped that he would affect

the public opinion and possibly help to make some changes in the legal

system. Not long after "Great Expectations" was written the legal

system in Britain changed, so it seems that Dickens' views of the

legal system were shared with others and he must have been an

influential writer in the nineteenth century if "Great Expectations"

made such a huge impact.