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How Does Dickens Present Pip In Chapter 1

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The reader is introduced to the main character from the first lines. His name is Pip. This name is used by the character himself when being an infant he joins his first name and his surname together after he tries to pronounce these correctly ‘infant tongue could make both names nothing or more explicit that Pip’.
As Pip remembers ‘most vivid and broad impression of identity of things, seem to me to have been gained on a memorable afternoon towards the evening’. Pips first memories are from the churchyard where his mother, father and siblings are buried. Here we are introduced to the lonely orphan Pip. On that afternoon Pip realises his loneliness both physically (as Pip thinks) and mentally. Mental loneliness of the Pip is presented …show more content…

This is shown when he tries to imagine how his parents would look like from their tombstones ‘my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones’. He imagines that his father was ‘square, stout, dark man’ and that his mother was ‘freckled and sickly’. Charles Dickens tries to lighten the mood in this scene and bring some comedy to attract the reader by including Pips thinking about his mothers name ‘Also Georgiana Wife of the Above’ and further when Pip imagines his brothers ‘been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers’. The writer portrays Pip as an innocent child who is alone and scared in his own words ‘the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it …show more content…

Pip willingness to provided information about his family to the stranger shows his good personality and that Pip is a naturally giving person. Pip also feels sorry for the man as he walks towards the churchyard wall and ‘hugged his shuddering body’ which was cut and bruised. He then turns several times to look at the escaped, limping convict which might indicate compassion towards the convict and Pips kindness. The first chapter greatly succeeds in establishing the mood of the novel. It is gloomy and somewhat scary environment for the Pip.
The second chapter describes Pips guardians and also the terrible predicament Pip has within his own

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These various qualities significantly make an impact towards the character, causing isolation and aloneness. Although as a child he experienced happiness and joy which leads to hope that one day he can discover contentment

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Pip's fairy tale like view on the upper class is shattered when Magwitch, a convict, declares that he's Pip'd benefactor. Pip can't believe that a low-class criminal had wealth rivaling that of a wealthy gentleman's. It's a wake up call for Pip. (page 294) Magwitch's death also brings out Pip's softer, more sentimental side as Pip learns to love a person for who they are now and not what their standing or past was. (page 428) Pip sells all his belongings to pay for his debts and starts anew as a humble clerk at Clarriker and Herbert's company.

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Hes latched on to Pip always wanting to be around him and asking him the craziest questions that Pip rarely has the answer to. One day Pip is sent to the principal's office. This visit is different because the

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Mr. Jaggers notes Pip’s clothes as “working” and that he needs “new clothes” (Dickens 141). Pip’s working clothes marks him as a member of a lower class society. By replacing his old clothes, Pip isolates himself from his old society. With Pip’s moral degradation from isolating himself from his old society, Dickens shows the regressive effects of isolation from society. With the removal from one’s society, he loses the support network the society provided along with teachings from that society.

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While reading this book a few things were noticed like the number of characters who were experiencing loneliness. Although none of the characters really know each other they still have one thing in common and that’s their need of companionship. In my essay I’ll be explaining how each one needs a companion. The characters Lennie, Curley’s wife, and Crooks all exemplify loneliness and isolation.

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In enduring these complex emotions, this section was the most remarkable part. One of the first apparent emotions the boy experiences with the death of his father is loneliness to make this section memorable. The boy expresses this sentiment when he stays with his father described as, “When he came back he knelt beside his father and held his cold hand and said his name over and over again,” (McCarthy 281). The definition of loneliness is, “sadness because one has no friends or company.”

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Although Pip’s ambition is the cause of his rise in society, it is not the cause of all the betterment in his personal life. “Let me confess exactly, with what feelings I looked forward to Joe’s coming. Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; not with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money” The fulfilment of Pip’s aspiration to elevate his social status and become a gentleman creates a wedge between himself and the people he cares about. He begins by saying ‘confess’ which invokes a sentiment of wrongdoing and sets the tone as despondent, the use of ‘incongruity’ suggests Pip is destabilized by Joe’s arrival and realizes the incompatibility of his past life and his present life.

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During Pip and the convicts first interaction, Pip had been threatened and physically harassed by the convict. When the convict returns many years after their meeting on the marshes, Pip thinks of him as a wild animal: “The abhorrence in which I held the man , the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast” (773). The way they had first met had been incredibly unpleasant and rather scarring for Pip, something he had clearly not forgotten over the years. Remembering how the convict had treated him in the past; demanding Pip retrieve food and a file, threatening to kill him and shaking him upside down. Pip is terrified to be alone

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This is a play onto the social constructs about class and worth within people’s minds. Dickens is using their appearance to show how the court/legal system will favor someone who looks of higher class. Previously, amidst waiting for Estella’s coach to arrive, Pip goes for a walk with Wemmick. On this walk they discuss Jaggers work and his work ethic. This conversation makes Pip think about his involvement with

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Secondly Pip is also punished in a way after hitting the convict. Pip fully expects to be jailed. At the beginning of Chapter 12, he says, "I felt that the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the Law would avenge it" (page 93). For several days after he fights with the pale young gentleman, Pip does not stray far from home, as he expects that officers of the County Jail will soon put him in prison.

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Through her attempts she replaces her daughter’s heart with ice and breaks young men’s hearts. In Dickens’ bildungsroman Great Expectations, Pip and Miss Havisham’s morally ambiguous characterization helps develop the theme, that one needs to learn to be resilient. The internal struggles that Pip experiences through the novel, reveal his displeasure to his settings and

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As well as helping to drive the action of the entire novel, Magwitch also provides much of the tension and suspense that engage the reader’s interest in the opening chapters. On his first appearance, Magwitch is a desperate figure, prepared to cut the throat of a young child (Chapter 1, p.4). Dickens subtly maintains sympathy for him, however, by referring to his hunger, his various wounds and his uncontrollable shivering. His second meeting with Pip (Chapter 3, p.19) reveals a gentle and more gracious nature as he politely

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Great expectations is written by Charles Dickens in 1860. The novel is about an orphan named Pip, he lives with his older sister Mrs. Joe Gargery. She is mean and bossy, but luckily, for Pip his sister is married to Mr. Joe Gargery. He is very nice and kind to Pip, and they are sort of best friends. The novel starts with Pip being on the graveyard, visiting his parents.

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In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip, an orphan raised by his cruel sister, Mrs. Joe, and her kindly husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith, becomes very ashamed of his background after a sudden chain of events which drives him to a different social class. Pip's motive to change begins when he meets a beautiful girl named Estella who is in the upper class. As the novel progresses, Pip attempts to achieve the greater things for himself. Overtime, Pip realizes the dangers of being driven by a desire of wealth and social status. The novel follows Pip's process from childhood innocence to experience.

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