Explore the ways Dickens uses places and atmosphere in Great Expectations Essay Example For Students

Explore the ways Dickens uses places and atmosphere in Great Expectations Essay Dickens wrote Great Expectations in 1860. It is now well renowned for being a dark, atmospheric novel, set in 19th Century Victorian England. Charles Dickens is widely known today for the success of his novels, and his excellence in using fictional, atmospheric places in Great Expectations to reflect the minds of characters and to explore significant themes, such as class, crime, and love. Dickens uses symbolic description to convey messages about these themes, thus creating appropriate atmospheres for the characters. Dickens prepares the reader for the grimness of the novel as a whole by introducing melancholic places using literary devices. For example, the Kent marshes in Chapter 1, where Dickens uses symbols, personification, emotive imagery, and repetition in his description. Dickens opens Chapter 1 by using the setting of a churchyard to create an eerie mood. He describes the churchyard as bleak and overgrown, stressing the grimness and the isolation of the churchyard during Pips encounter with Magwitch. Dickens also uses emotive imagery of Pips family gravestones. He stresses that all Pip has as a memory of his parents and his five brothers is the inscriptions carved on the family gravestones which Pip imagines as their actual appearances. Pip imagines his father as stout with curly black hair, his mother freckled, and his five brothers being the shape of their lozenges with their hands in their trousers-pockets. This emotionally moves the reader, thereby creating sympathy for Pip right from the beginning, introducing the misery of the novel as a whole through the gloominess of the churchyard, the deathly tone preparing us for the theme of loss throughout the novel. Dickens uses repetition of nettles and tombstones to perhaps suggest that the churchyard is a place of pain and death. This emphasises the sinister mood of Pips encounter with Magwitch by creating anxiety in the reader. Dickens also refers to the temperature being raw. He mentions that the afternoon was heading towards evening, suggesting that it was cold and fairly dark in the churchyard at the time, the darkness symbolising mystery and the unknown, adding to the vivid apprehensive atmosphere. Dickens stresses a fearful tone throughout Chapter 1, using words such as dead, black and gibbet, representing death, violence and crime. The repetition of dead and buried also creates a grim, dark and deathly mood. He describes Pip as a small bundle of shivers and emphasises the whole setting as appearing threatening to Pip by stressing the imagery of the aggressive sea, the comparison of the wind rushing to a predator, and the personification of the red sky being angry, again suggesting violence and death contributing to the ominous atmosphere. In Chapter 1, Dickens uses the pathetic fallacy to show characterisation, reflecting the minds of both Pip and Magwitch by creating a sinister atmosphere. Pips name suggests that like a seed, he is small, young and vulnerable, and will take a journey to grow into manhood. During Pips encounter with Magwitch, an apprehensive atmosphere helps Dickens to portray Pip as being easily intimidated and weak by emphasising Pips vulnerability. Magwitch is described as a fearful man; Dickens presents Magwitch with the repulsive appearance of a stereotypical convict. He includes details such as Magwitch having broken shoes and not wearing a hat, only a rag tied round his head to hint to the reader that there is something peculiar and rough about him, as he is not following the typical Victorian style of middle-class dress. An ominous tone helps Dickens to portray Magwitch as being threatening and powerful by emphasising his abusive and dominating behaviour towards Pip. However, Dickens hints that on the inside, Magwitch is not an all-bad person. Like Pip, Magwitch is presented as a victim suffering pain. To add tension, Dickens uses long, dramatic sentences to portray Magwitchs long, traumatic, desperate journey of running. Magwitch also throws out a long line of threats at Pip, emphasising his panic and agitation. His desperation for food is shown when he tries to go as far as to scare Pip, a young child, with another imaginary criminal. Dickens also uses the repetition of limped and uses words such as cut, torn and shuddering portraying Magwitchs suffering. Dickens uses the ominous tone of Chapter 1 to express his outlook on the typical morals and philosophy in Victorian England and to explore themes that he later covers, such as childhood, crime, and class. Dickens portrays childhood as being a strong influence on the characters later on in life. He uses Pip in Chapter 1 to show this. Pip had a very unhappy, tragic childhood, mourning over his family and lacking love. Dickens suggests that this guided him to his dark, dreary, and lonely imagination in the churchyard on the evening of his encounter with Magwitch. Pip imagines dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, and Magwitch limping as though he were the pirate come to life, going to hook himself back on the gibbet again. Pip frightens himself with his own twisted imagination, causing the reader to feel sympathy towards him. Crime, punishment and justice are important issues raised by Dickens in this novel. Dickens uses Magwitch in Chapter 1 to represent the theme of crime. Magwitch is an escaped convict, which Dickens emphasises by the description of the iron chained to his leg. Magwitch threatens, assaults and intimidates Pip using aggressive behaviour. He incites Pip to crime, telling him to steal and invents another imaginary criminal to scare Pip furthermore. This stresses Dickenss disapproval of crime and criminals. In Chapter 1, Dickens also covers the major theme of class and snobbery in Victorian England, which he uses both Pip and Magwitch to represent. Dickens portrays the working-class as good people, and therefore rewards them later on in the novel. For example, Pip in Chapter 1 is a young and innocent child deprived of love and family, but is later rewarded with happiness. Dickens shows the working-class to be unfairly treated as a result of snobbery. A Womans Aspiration For Freedom Essay - The Story Of An HourThis adds to the tension for the reader, again creating anxiety and sympathy for not only Pip, but also Estella. Dickens uses the ominous tone of Chapters 8 and 11 to show characterisation, reflecting the minds of Pip and Estella as well as Miss Havisham. Pip is again revealed in these Chapters to let his dark imagination take over when he sees Miss Havisham as a figure that emerges hanging by the neck and then suddenly disappears, suggesting that she wasnt there in the first place. By this, his mind is again suggested to be grim, referring back to his tragic childhood in Chapter 1. Similarly, Estella is presented as being damaged, however, as a result of being brought up by Miss Havisham, who is damaged herself, and thus damaging. Estellas relationship with Miss Havisham is presented as disfunctional. Dickens uses the rest of the novel to convey the moral that children need to be guided by role models. He shows this idea by Pip finally reaching his Great Expectations through hard work and having been guided by Joe, whereas, Estella had nobody except Miss Havisham to guide her. Estella is married to a violent man as a result, and pays for the emotional crime that she had put Pip through, which Miss Havisham had forced her to. In Chapters 8 and 11, Dickens explores the main themes of money and love. Dickens names Miss Havishams house, Satis House, using the word Satis meaning enough, as a symbol that Miss Havisham has more than enough money. Dickens strongly links the theme of money with love and happiness in these Chapters. The portrayal of Satis House is that although it is grand, it holds no love or happiness, which Dickens presents by using the idea that Miss Havisham is with money, but without love; the moral being that money doesnt guarantee happiness. Later on in the novel, Pip also represents this moral as his Great Expectations do not gain him Estella. In contrast to the other atmospheric places, Dickens portrays Wemmicks castle in Chapter 25 as a peculiar, ironic, mad house using vivid, emotive imagery and irony. He describes it as a little wooden cottage and Pips opinion of the castle as small with queer, gothic windows and a small, gothic door. The castle is also conveyed as secluded with a drawbridge that when hoisted up, cuts off any communication. Likewise with Miss Havisham and Satis House, the significance of this is that he has isolated himself from reality and society, living in his dream castle. Dickens uses the seclusion of the castle and the idea that Wemmick wishes neither himself nor Pip to speak of it whilst in the office to build up tension, and create anxiety for the reader. However, inside, Wemmicks castle is a place of love, life and comedy. Dickens uses the imagery of Wemmick stepping into his own little dream world of rightly deserved happiness when hes in his castle. His deserved happiness which Dickens stresses by the hard work that Wemmick puts into the castle, for example, engineering and gardening. Wemmicks castle is presented as though it is part of a magical fairytale by the way Dickens describes its ornamental lake with an island in the middle. Its portrayed as comic, a crazy little box of a cottage, the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted with guns. The life of the castle is emphasised by the way that he describes all the animals that he keeps -pigs, fowls, and rabbits. gggggggggThe pathetic fallacy is used in Chapter 25 to reflect Wemmicks state of mind. Wemmick is portrayed through his ironic, comic castle as being wildly imaginative. Reality seems to have been lost in the castle; however, this brings out the life of the castle, and therefore brings the reader to like Wemmick for his originality. Wemmicks cheerful attitude inside the castle also stresses life of the castle. Wemmicks father, Aged, is portrayed as cheerful and full of life. He describes his sons place as a pretty pleasure-ground and beautiful works. Dickens presents Wemmicks and Ageds relationship as just about the only sign of happiness in the novel: just about the only functional family. The theme explored in Chapter 25 is the love between Wemmick and his father. In this Chapter, love is portrayed unlike it is in the rest of the novel: rather than bringing pain, love is seen to give happiness. Aged is proud of his sons fine place and is described himself as clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for. Dickens stresses the fond bond between them both and their enthusiasm for living life in the castle, away from reality. Dickens uses settings in Great Expectations, such as the marshes and Satis House to create a dark, ominous mood. However, he then uses Wemmicks castle, a delightfully different place to portray a cheerful atmosphere. The different tones that Dickens creates help prepare the reader for the novel as a whole by stressing Pips struggle to reach his Great Expectations.