How Does Dickens Present The Theme Of Loyalty And Social Class

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Recommended: Analysis of pip's character as a child with great expectations

In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, Pip’s journey into adulthood as well as the upper class is shown through the people he meets and the way that his view of the world changes. Strange characters are met and stranger experiences are had, and Pip’s life grows more and more complex as each event occurs, starting at the very beginning with the convict in the cemetery, who proves the complexity of Pip’s life when he tells Pip that he gave him all of his money in order to bring him into the upper class and turn him into a gentleman. Throughout the novel, Dickens uses literary devices such as symbolism and imagery to give the story the theme of loyalty versus social class. Symbolism is used to show the world changing around Pip and his uncertainty …show more content…

Firstly, the clocks. Every single clock in the Satis House is stopped at twenty minutes to nine, representing her inability to move past the moment that her bridegroom betrayed her. As well as the clocks, she is described as not being completely dressed. “She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on--the other was on the table near her hand…” (pg. 52). After this first meeting, every time that Pip sees Miss Havisham, she is only wearing one shoe. Her missing a shoe represents the point she was at when she found out that her soon-to-be-husband (later discovered to be Compeyson) had abandoned her, once again showing that she is not only unable to move on, but unwilling, as she refuses to even put on her other shoe. Another use of symbolism in the novel is the mist. It is used to show times when Pip is unsure of what is about to happen, and maybe a little wary. For example, when Pip is a young boy and is bringing the stolen food to the convict, the mist is described as, “...heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me,” (pg. 14). It was obvious that Pip was scared of what would happen when he once again saw the convict, and the use of the mist made the scene even more nerve-wracking for him. The mist is seen again when Pip begins his journey to becoming a gentleman and begins making his way to London. During the journey, he thinks, “We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me,” (pg. 152). These thoughts show that during his journey to London, he watched as everything he knew disappeared, and yet he could not see the life he was coming into due to the mist, showing his uncertainty of his future. It is again used to describe the weather on the night that Pip is

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