To do this, the essay will analyse volume one of ‘Great Expectations’. The opening scene charts the development of Pip, the main character, within the context of society just like a normal typical Bildungsroman. Straight away from the first paragraph, Dickens uses some of the main themes of a Bildungsroman. This includes autobiography, “As I never saw my mother or father as their days were long before the days of photographs”. This shows that Pip is looking back at his life and has suffered a loss in his childhood, which conforms to the Bildungsroman genre.
Throughout this essay, I will be explaining as well as describing how the author, Charles Dickens, makes the reader, feel sorry for Pip. We are now going to look at the first Opening Chapter. Chapter one is basically telling us who the main person is and setting the scene in which he was brought up with his sister. Charles Dickens has written this novel in first person so it helps us to understand Pips feelings. This Chapter tells us about his past, present and future.
Another time Dickens uses this quality of writing in his novel is when Mr. Jagger's is telling Pip of all the money he just inherited. He constantly uses the phase "Your Great Expectations". In conclusion, Charles Dickens uses lots of different techniques to fulfill his novel. These techniques are his use of repetition, his eccentric characters, and his theme of money and social power. Without these qualities, Charles Dickens's Great Expectation would not be nearly the same.
It is possible to see the important people, places, and events of Dickens' life thinly disguised in his fiction. Stylistically, evidence of this can be seen in Great Expectations. For instance, semblances of his mother, father, past loves, and even Dickens himself are visible in the novel. However, Dickens' past influenced not only character and plot devices in Great Expectations, but also the very syntax he used to create his fiction. Parallels can be seen between his musings on his personal life and his portrayal of people and places in Great Expectations.
Chapter one of the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a very important chapter to the novel; it introduces the reader to the novel. Charles Dickens uses a number of different methods and techniques to do this. At the beginning of the chapter Dickens introduces Pip, the main character in the novel. The audience get to know a little about Pip's background and his life, Dickens makes it evident right from the beginning that this story is about Pip. We notice that Dickens writes in the first person, he writes as if he is Pip.
This concept is further revealed when he refers to Oliver as an “item of mortality” and then later on in the chapter “it”. The child deserves no name as he is not a legitimate member of society so he has no place or importance: he starts life at the bottom of the Victorian food chain. By having the narrator address Oliver as a “it” instead of a “him” Oliver is dehumanised and so Dickens draws this to our attention. Born into “this world or sorrow and trouble” our narrator seems to believe that Oliver’s chance of survival are extremely slim, so we are surprised when Dickens has him say; “it was the best thing for Oliver Twist that would by possibility have occurred” (being born in a workhouse), he also tells us the baby “lay gasping on a little flock mattress rather unequally poised between this world and the next”. All the odds are against Oliver yet this neglect saves him life!
E. D. H. Johnson's, Charles Dickens: An Introduction to His Novels, discussed a conversation that John Forster overheard between Charles Dickens’s father and a man, in which; the man claimed that he remembered a young Dickens working in his factory (Johnson 1). Johnson stated, “Forster's curiosity over this chance discovery moved Dickens to write the fragment of an autobiography which he subsequently entrusted to his friend when he decided to incorporate the substance of his recollections almost verbatim in the Murdstone and Grinby episode of David Copperfield”(Johnson 1). D... ... middle of paper ... ...vid Copperfield. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/engl253-01s02/dickens/publicationrecep.htm Other Sites interesting Sources Hornback, Bert. David Copperfield in Noah's Architecture: A Study of Dickens' Mythology.
From the opening paragraph we are given insight into the education or lack of when that young Philip’s “infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip”. The way in which this is told suggests that it is all in the past and Pip is reminiscing on his past. Pip continues his early history by informing the responder about his family: mother, father, five brothers and sisters. Pip explains “since I never sat my mother or father… my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.” This quote is evoking and places a great deal of sympathy upon Pip. This ties in with Pips description of life with it’s sad and dismal childhood.
We see Pip's sense of morals change throughout the book, for example right at the beginning we see Pip describing what he thinks his parents looked like. We see a child like innocence in him and the reader knows how imaginative Pip is "unreasonably derived form their tombstones". Charles Dickens sets out the setting for us, makes us feel sympathy towards Pip but also doesn't dwell on the tragedy of Pip being an orphan. Charles Dickens humourises it, "I drew a childish conclusion". As Pip steals for the convict I feel he is beginning to change, although he still has a sense of morals because he has a conscience "conscience is a dreadful thing when it confuses a man or boy.
Pip of the working class wants to improve himself and desires an education to be good enough for a girl from the upper class called Estella. The novel explores themes of class, education and the penal system in Victorian times. Pip as an adult who has matured is looking back at his life and he is narrating his story. Chapter one contains a lot of information about Pip. We can learn his role in the novel, his past, present and a bit of his future.