Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations written by Charles Dickens. I have been analysing

the way in which Dickens uses language techniques to create.

I have recently been reading the famous novel “Great Expectations”

written by Charles Dickens. I have been analysing the way in which

Dickens uses language techniques to create themes, characters and a

setting for his story. The novel itself was written in Victorian times

and a lot of the themes that occur in the book were also very

prominent in the Victorian era.

Firstly I want to mention the similarities between the main character

and narrator Pip and the actual writer Charles Dickens. They both had

a very comparable childhood with family problems and suffering very

early on in their lives. The most striking similarity though is that

both Pip and Dickens were at the bottom of the social ladder and the

theme of social status is probably the most important one in this

novel. This theme pieces together the whole plot of the book with a

lower class Pip always eager to better himself and reach the top of

that ladder. I also believe that due to Dickens being initially

subjected to a life of poverty he had a negative view of money and

status; almost all the characters with wealth and status in the novel

end up destroyed.

Secondly I am going to discuss the effectiveness of the serialised

format of the novel. Charles Dickens actually wrote the novel in

separate chapters before eventually merging them to make the book.

This therefore is why each chapter is like an episode of a drama with

a cliff-hanger tempting the enthralled reader into reading on.

Throughout my coursework I am also going to analyse the use of themes

within the novel. I believe that the most prominent theme throughout

the book is the idea of social class. Social status has a massive

impact on the book and was a very important part of Dickens’ life as

well. Instantly as the first chapter unfolds we see many different

examples of social status with the criminal, Joe and also Mrs. Joe all

being manual workers. Later in the novel we also see several

characters from a higher social class such as Estella and Miss

Havisham. Throughout the novel though, we see Pip, a young labourer

constantly trying to climb the social ladder, not only due to his

ambition but also to impress the beautiful but much higher classed

Estella, who had previously looked down on Pip referring to him as the

“boy”.

I also intend to look at the way Dickens used language to introduce

the themes of death, childhood, loneliness and crime in chapter 1.