Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

“Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens

This assignment is looking closely at a novel written before 1900. The book is called “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens. The novel is in the first person, autobiographical form, that it is Pip who looks back at his past life and recounts the event which led to the situation we find him in at the last chapter. Dickens creates some memorable people, realism is found in his settings.

The two characters I shall concentrate on are Pip and Magwitch appears in the opening sequences of the novel but does not return until chapter 20 when Pip is twenty three. This second sequence reveals the identity of the person who has made Pip a ‘gentleman’.

When Pip was a young boy his mother, father, and five brothers died. So Pip had to live with his sister and her husband the blacksmith Joe Gargery. His sisters house is a quite lonely house near the River Thames. The house has somewhat a wilderness about it.

Magwitch is an escaped convict. Magwitch make it out that he is mean but later on we learn that he is not going to harm Pip. Magwitch is in the sort of situation where he fears for his life because he is a criminal. but he is a quiet religious man.

The first time Pip meet the convict he was standing by his family’s gravestones. Dickens describes the scenery as a “raw afternoon towards evening” he then goes on to say “this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the church yard”. when Pip first saw Magwitch (the convict) he was scared and didn’t know what to do he saw the iron canes on his legs. Magwitch tipped Pip up side down then up right Pip said to him “don’t cut my throat sir”. and asked him where his parents are Pip pointed behind Magwitch, at this point Magwitch thought that Pips parents would be behind him and when he didn’t see anyone there he realised that he meant that they were dead.