Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, a novel written by Charles Dickens is one of high

standards and popularity with the public. I have been set an

assignment to examine the main character Pip and the environment in

which he lives as well as his past and current life. Enable to

complete my task, I will only be looking at the first few pages in the

novel and examine the setting, some of the characters that we are

introduced to, the plot and the language used throughout the novel.

In the novel we are introduced to a variety of settings, however the

bulk of the story is set in a small village nearby Essex. In a village

like this, there will probably not be any rich or important people and

the population will mostly consist of farmers. This is mainly because

it is a very country like area, surrounded with marshlands and a

small, bleak churchyard, where we will first meet Pip. Evidence to

support my point can be found in the novel, '…in that

churchyard…looking out at the dark, flat, wild marshes'

His first name is Phillip, but when he was small he could only say

Pip. 'I could only manage to say Pip.' When we meet him, he is sitting

on a gravestone in the churchyard of the small country village one

December afternoon. His parents are dead, this would be the reason for

the small boy sitting in a cemetery, and he lives with his sister who

is more than twenty years older than him. 'Who do you live with' the

convict demanded 'With my sister, sir, wife of Joe Gargery.' Knowing

this and that his sister 'brought him up by hand' we can understand

that Pip probably had a very difficult childhood, never taking about

his parent or knowing what they look like. In this part of the story,

Pip is still a very young child, probably between eight and ten years

of age. I know this, as only a small child would believe the convict's

threat of 'I travel with a man who roasts boy hearts and eats them he