Charles Dickens: Great Expectations
Describe how Dickens creates atmosphere and introduces characters inChapter One of Great Expectations.
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In this essay I am going to describe how Dickens successfully usestension and drama to create atmosphere and to introduce his charactersstatus, emotions and identity in the opening chapter of GreatExpectations. The central character, Pip, is followed from youth as hemakes the journey from poverty to riches and back again as he attemptsto fulfil his own great expectations. To do this I will be examiningin close detail the techniques he used to sustain the reader’sinterest in the first chapter.
Dickens introduces the opening of this novel with death “from theirtombstones” and violence “Don’t cut my throat!” This is a typicalconvention of gothic literature. This chapter is set among desolatemarshes in a ruined graveyard. The weather plays an important part inthe opening chapter “the sky was a row of long angry red lines” and“dense black lines”; “the wind was “rushing”. These are examples ofpathetic fallacy, this is when the weather is used to reflect what ishappening in the story. To create atmosphere Dickens drags out howPip’s family is all dead and how Pip is alone in the world, “dead andburied”. This makes the readers feel sorry for Pip because he is allalone in the world and we don’t know yet whether he has somebody tolook after him or not. However later on in the chapter we are toldthat he lives with his sister and her husband the blacksmith “[Mr.And] Mrs. Joe Gargery”.
Dickens uses a lot of metaphors to describe what he is saying in thestory “Savage lair from …
…man who may be heading towards the end of his life “A manwhose legs are mumbled and stiff”. In the eyes of young Pip, hedescribes Magwitch as though he were “eluding the hands of the deadpeople,” this conveys an image of dead people pulling him in to thegrave, which is a classical image of gothic literature “hellish”
On the whole, the convict has a sense of humor “I wish I was a frog”,he also makes idle threats and his emotions are shown.
In conclusion Dickens successfully creates atmosphere and introducescharacter in chapter one of great expectations with the use ofrepetition “he tilted me again”, metaphors “the low leaden line beyondwas the river” and the use of verbs instead of adjectives “lamed” and“stung”. Humor is also used to add drama to this chapter “I earnestlyexpressed my hope that he wouldn’t”
