Great Expectations written by Charles Dickens Essay

Great Expectations Coursework

How does Dickens engage the reader in ‘Great Expectations’?

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‘Great Expectations’ was written by Charles Dickens in the Victoriantimes where gothic elements were greatly enjoyed by the readers atthat time. In the Victorian age, crimes would be taken extremelyseriously and any thief caught would be taken to the Hulks (prisonships). The title ‘Great Expectations’ gives us the idea that thenovel is about the high hopes about Pip’s life or future. ‘GreatExpectations’ was serialised, where two chapters were published everyweek. To ensure that the readers stayed interested, Dickens used avariety of techniques and ended most chapters with cliff-hangers.

One technique that Dickens uses to engage the reader in this book isthe gothic setting. An example of a gothic element is found in chapterone. “Ours was the marsh country (…) I found out for certain, thatthis bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard”.‘overgrown’ suggests that the churchyard has been abandoned and notcared for. ‘nettles’ is another gothic element because nettles areunwanted weeds that don’t look nice. This further emphasises theabandonment of the churchyard.

Another technique Dickens uses in ‘Great Expectations’ to engage thereader in this book is the strong characterisation of each character.E.g. in the start of chapter two, “My sister, Mrs Joe Gargery (…) havea hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it uponher husband as well as upon me (…) She was tall and bony, and alwayswore a coarse apron” The amount of detail written just to describe onecharacter in the novel gives the reader a good image of what Mrs JoeGargery would have looked like. Words like ‘har…

…t was harshand child abuse. This quote also has a rhyme to it which makes it morememorable.

Dickens included dialogue of all characters to engage the reader in‘Great Expectations’. In chapter 7, Mrs Joe says, “if this boy ain’tgrateful this night, he never will be!”. Dialogue makes the novel moreinteresting because it adds variety to it. Dickens included both 1stperson and 3rd person throughout the story. If you try to read a bookwritten all in the 3rd person, it would be tedious. Having dialoguealso teaches us more about the characters and the way they speak. Fromthe quote we can see that Mrs Joe is speaking informally because shesays “aint” which is colloquial speech for “is not”. We learn moreabout the characters personality when dialogue is included and it alsomakes the novel more interesting so the reader is likely to continuereading.

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