'Great Expectations' is a novel written by Charles Dickens in 1860. In this time period ( the Victorian era ) novels were published in magazines, and so were released a chapter at a time. This meant that Dickens had to make the scenarios and characters interesting and he also had to use cliffhangers to entice his readers to buy the next issue of the magazine to read the next chapter. Dickens' novels were so successful with the Victorians because of the believable characters and events. Most of his novels are based on the social background of child labour and the gentry, for example 'Oliver Twist'.
After reading chapters one and thirty-nine, we can now make comparisons between the two, focusing on areas such as the circumstances of Pip and Magwitch, the settings that the pair meet eachother in, the presentation of the characters ( the changes in Magwich and the changes in Pip ), what we can learn about nineteenth century life from both chapters and finally, the message Dickens includes in each chapter.
In chapter one, Pip is an orphaned child and visits the graves of his dead parents "as I never saw my father or my mother" and his brothers "the memory of five little brothers of mine" and this suggests that Pip is rather lonely, in contrast to chapter thirty-nine where he is "three-and-twenty years of age" and lives with his "friend and companion" Herbert Pocket, and is not lonely any more. He is also very wealthy by this chapter as his income since he became of age was a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor. Because Pip is now wealthy and lives in London, he has forgotten his roots and where he came from as a small boy in chapter one; we can tell this from the way he treats Joe Gargery and is ashamed of him when he visits Pip in London.
The convict Magwich's cirumstances have also changed between chapters one and thirty-nine; for instance in the first chapter Magwich is an escaped criminal with "a great iron on his leg...broken shoes" and "no hat" and is desparate for food as he ate the bread he stole from Pip "ravenously". Dissimilarly in chapter thirty-nine when we meet Magwich again, his circumstances have changed as he looks and acts like a gentleman as "he pulled off" his "hat", and hats were often worn by the gentry. He is also no longer desparate for food because of his steady income from is job as a "sheep farmer" in the "new world" or Australia, where he was sent after being convicted and sentenced.
The way Dickens represents the two characters is different in chapter one than they way they are represented in chapter thirty-nine; for example in chapter one, Pip is a young boy who has never seen his parents and is standing alone in a graveyard, imagining what his dead relatives look like: "gave me an odd idea that he was a square dark man...my mother was freckled and sickly". This is sort of a similarity as Pip says he "was alone" in chapter thirty-nine. In the first chapter Pip meets the convict and is scared of him as he gives short answers and is polite even thought Magwich is threatening him "yes, Sir". In comparison to this, chapter thirty-nine presents us with a much braver Pip meeting Magwich once again. He tells Magwich to "keep off". He is not a little boy anymore, he is an educated twenty-three year old man. He is also "abhorring" Magwich as he learns that he is in fact Pip's benefactor, not Miss. Havesham.
Magwich is also represented differently across the two chapters. In chapter one, he is described as a "fearful man" who is fightihg for survival and even lightly considers cannibalism "what fat cheeks you ha' got...darn me if I couldn't eat 'em". He is represented as an evil man who treatens to cut Pip's throat and orders him to fetch a file so that Magwich can cut off the iron shackles around his leg and to make sure Pip does what he says he tells him that "there's a young man hid" with him that makes Magwich himself seem like an "angel". However in chapter thrity-nine Magwich is depicted as a kind and polite man, addressing Pip as "master", waiting to show Pip his gratitude as he "never forgot" what Pip did for him as a young boy. Instead of wanting to scare Pip, Magwich wants Pip to respect him as he sees himself as Pip's "second father" and tells Pip that it is him that turned him into a gentleman.
Chapter one is set in the "marsh country" and because marsh ground is unsafe, it connects to Pip's emotions and feelings of being unsafe himself, especially when he meets Magwich. The weather is described as a "raw afternoon" which gives a sense of tension, as does the ides of the churchyard being a "bleak place, overgrown with nettles" which gives an eerie and unpleasant atmosphere.
In chapter thirty-nine, the setting has a similar effect of tension and atmoshpere on the reader. The weather is "wretched" and "stormy and wet" and gives a similar sense of not being safe, as in chapter one, and also gives an idea of negative feelings to come later on in the chapter. The atmosphere is shown by the "lamps on the bridges and of the shore...shuddering" this atmosphere being eerie and evil. The difference in this chapter is that it is not afternoon, but late at night as "Saint Paul's...struck that hour" the hour being "eleven O'clock". Both these settings and other settings in the novel such as Statis House, resemble gothis horror novels and there are many examples of this in Dickens' novels.
These two chapters can also tell us about what life was like in the nineteenth century. In chapter one, we find out that lots of children died quite early from "five...brothers of mine...who gave up...exedingly early in that universal struggle". We can also tell that prisoners were not treated very well, as Magwich, the convict, is "all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg".
In chapter thirty-nine, we find out a few things. We find out that the streets were not concrete or tarmac, and not in very good condition, "mud, deep in all the streets". We can also tell that there was not electricity "the staircase lamps were blown out".
In chapter one, Pip says that Magwich is a "man with no hat" and this is because he is not a gentleman, but in chapter thirty-nine, Magwich "pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat" so in this chapter Magwich has become a gentleman; this tellsus that hats were popular and fashionable to the gentry in the nineteenth century. Magwich was sent to Australia for his crimes, but he calls it the "new world" which inddicates that it has only recently been discovered, and it also shows that many criminals were deported to this "new world". The grammar Dickens uses is different to the grammar we use today, for example Pip says "three-and-twenty years of age", whereas we would say tweenty-three years old, and "purposing to close my book at eleven O'clock" instead of 'I planned to close my book'.
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