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How Does Dickens make Great Expectations a memorable book? Dickens uses many different techniques to make Great Expectations a memorable book. This book is about a boy called Pip who rises from his poor background to wealth due to an unknown benefactor. In particular Dickens¡¯s characters appeal to me, as they are all so embellished so as to become caricatures. The way that each of the characters that appear in Pip¡¯s childhood are described, tells you a lot about the way Pip thinks and remembers them. Dickens uses a double narrative perspective when he is telling the story so it is told half through the eyes of Pip, at a child, and half as Pip as an adult looking back at his childhood. This creates a comic effect as he is describing inane little situations as though they are life and death problems. For example, when Pip is going to ¡®steal from Mrs. Joe,¡¯ he is making a lot of fuss about a hunk of bread and butter that he himself was supposed to eat anyway! Pip says, ¡°At last, I desperately considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the circumstances.¡± This is humorous as Pip is describing his childish predicament with so much loquacity and grace that is seems silly that someone so intelligent should be stuck in such a delicate circumstance. The way that Mrs. Joe treats Pip is also comical as she is so exaggerated in everything she does and she overreacts to every little situation. For his sister, she regularly beats him and is always complaining that he will be the death of her. She seems to completely despise him, e.g. when she is feeding him tar water it says, ¡°My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair: saying nothing more than the awful words, ¡®You come along and be dosed.¡¯¡± This is what makes the style of Dickens so memorable. He takes things that he sees in everyday life and manipulates them so as to make them comic. The savage random beatings of Pip from Mrs. Joe although humorous also has an underlying message about the way that Victorian people treated their children. In today¡¯s society, child abuse is a serious social issue but to the modern reader, reading about the conflict between Pip and Mrs. Joe is very amusing instead of worrying. Joe gets fed some tar water as well even though he had not done anything wrong, having been too scared of his wife to protest. This is another aspect of comedy in the book: Joe, a large burly man is absolutely terrified of his small scrawny wife. This is completely farcical and absurd as you can tell that Joe doesn¡¯t really like his wife and Pip suggests that she probably bullied him in to it, which is probably true. Another aspect of Dickens¡¯ writing that makes Great Expectations such a memorable book is his vivid descriptions. Everything is depicted in so much detail that you are transported back to Victorian times, due to his descriptions of the dialects of the era or to the settings and people in the story. For example, when Pip first meets the convict he is described as, ¡°A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.¡± If this doesn¡¯t give you a clear picture of the type and appearance of person that Pip had to deal with then nothing will.
Approximate Word count = 2286
Approximate Pages = 9.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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