In this essay, I will be analysing what kind of techniques such as: characterisation, setting, atmosphere, themes and effective language Dickens uses to ensure his readers to gain an interest in the novel and continue to read on in Chapter 1 of ‘Great Expectations’.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7th February 1812 in Portsmouth, England and died on 9th June 1870 in Kent, England. Dickens was a well-known English novelist back in the Victorian period but until this day, Charles Dickens remains popular and his novels are still read by thousands each day. Dickens novels are extremely famous, especially ‘The Christmas …show more content…
The weather in Chapter 1 was windy, cold and “the rains were heavy”. Dickens gives an impression that it is a very gothic setting because the way he describes the atmosphere and the setting. The setting is a graveyard, known for burying dead bodies and being depressing, lonely and dark. Pip describe the graveyard for being a “bleak place overgrown with nettles”, this gives us an image of a dark, gothic place. Also, the landscape is described as the "dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard" The descriptions guides us readers to feel anxious for Pip because we all know no one can help Pip as he and the convict are alone in the miserable cemetery and no one can hear his plea for …show more content…
It is a highly effective way to start the novel because it starts off with Pip’s life on edge. This makes readers cling onto the book with fear and read on see what will happen to Pip. “His eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine most helplessly up into his” Dickens chooses the words “powerfully” and “helplessly” as it explains the situation with Pip and the convict. It creates tension and assures readers that Pip is a weak, little orphan who is being held by a powerful convict. The novel ends in a dramatic way and makes readers curious. Pip tells the convict that he will fetch him the file and meet up with him early in the morning. Humour is used when the convict intimidates Pip by turning him upside down.
The main themes in the novel are childhood, rags-to-riches, society and class and orphan. The novel is opened with Pip as a poor young, orphan boy who has no relatives apart from his sister, Mrs Joe Gargary. Society and class relate to ‘Great Expectations’ because Pip is of lower class and gets looked down on and he had big dreams of growing up to be a gentlemen. Rags-to-riches is also a main theme in this novel because Pip is in poverty right at the start as a young boy but grows up inheriting a lot of money and becomes