Great_Expectation_Essay

How Dickens creates powerful atmospheres and setting in his novel “Great Expectations” ‘Great Expectation’ was written by Charles Dickens. In 19th century, there are no law in that day to protect the child that’s why most of children could be brought up by hand. In that period, you do not really get opportunities to send your children to school so they had to send them out to factories instead. Charles Dickens novel, ‘Great Expectation’ is the struggle faced by Pip. The story uses element of his childhood to tell the story. Dickens creates powerful atmosphere and setting through out ‘Great Expectations’. In this essay I will be exploring how he creates these powerful atmospheres and setting in these three sections which are the marshes and Pip as young child, Satis house and Miss Havisham, London and Mr Jagger’s office. In the opening of Dickens novel, the atmosphere was dismal and cold when Pip is in the graveyard visiting his parent, “the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea.” This show that it was windy and dark so this make Pip feel scared but he still wants to be in graveyard. This also give reader a feeling that Pip is very brave because Pip only little boy and children that age shouldn’t be in graveyard at this time but Pip he’s lonely because his parent passed away and that’s why Pip always come to graveyard to visit his parent, this give reader the feeling that something might happened to him and feel sorry for him at the same time. Charles Dickens mention the word ‘dark’ and ‘black’ quite often because he want to make reader feel that is not a really nice place to be in this. This is the most effective words that Dickens used to describe the atmosphere in the opening chapter. In chapter 8 Pip is asked to go to Miss Havisham’s house and it is regarded as a great honour for him because Pip is living in lower class than Miss Havisham which is in higher class so this is really honour for him to meet her. After Pip arrived at Miss Havisham house, Pip gives a negative description about her house as a prison, “old brick, dismal and had a great many iron bar to it. Some of the window been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred.” This reflects that Miss Havisham had a sad life, she had her heart broken because she about to get married but he left her and that’s why she left the house like that because she closed up her heart and her mind, she doesn’t want to see any more of sunlight and out side world. When Pip went in to see Miss Havisham he describes Miss Havisham in a wedding dress in rich materials but it used to be white and now it changed to yellow and the flower on her hair had no brightness left, “I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flower and had no brightness left but the brightness of her skunk eyes.” This show that she had been wearing this for long time and the brightness is all fading out. This makes reader think that she very old and might have been heart broken. The second description gave by Pip is about Miss Havisham appearance which is linked to death because Pip said “I had been taken too one of our old mash churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement.” This description show that Miss Havisham appearance is like skeleton and also she wearing rich materials that’s why Pip describe her as a skeleton in rich dress and this show that she very high because even she old and not married she have money and very rich. The language of death that Pip had described Miss Havisham is very old and scary but also rich, atmosphere that give to reader is mysterious and depressing, the impression that give reader is quite nervous because of the appearance of Miss Havisham. Pip has ‘Great Expectation’ to become a gentleman, and his dream comes true because Pip has been given money by the convict to allow him to go to London and become a gentleman. As he gets older he gets a chance to go to London. Pip thought that London will be good place to live more than where he live but when he got there the image that he thought at the beginning is changed, “while I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk minister of justice ask me that he could give me a front place for this make Pip feel that is not really different from where he grow up.” This show that Pip doesn’t feel that this place is different from where he came from and is not very pleasant place to live. After Pip arrived in London he went in to Mr Jagger’s office and he found the clerk. He took Pip to Mr Jagger’s office and found another man in there but the clerk shove him out with ceremony that Pip never saw used. While Pip is in Mr Jagger’s office used in the description of Mr Jagger’s office he creates an a bleak and spooky place because he says, “I should not have expected to see – such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard several strange looking boxes and package, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitch about the nose.” This give very clear images that Mr Jaggers is quite weird and creepy because not a lot of people have an office like this, dirty and no light only the light from the sun can get through. The impression that created by the language of London given by Dickens is not a very pleasant place to live and quite scary place because “As I declined the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors' Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged: heightening the interest of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that "four on 'em" would come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a sickening idea of London…” this give reader impression that London is horrible and is not like when Pip thought of London at the beginning also Pip don’t like about punishment that they do to the people because when they punish people they do it in public and this is why Pip this is horrible and gave him sickening idea of London. In Dickens novel, he had created the effect of powerful and different descriptions on the reader and the scene that have most powerful setting atmosphere is the opening chapter scene because Dickens had describe the place in ‘dark’, ‘gloomy’ and ‘bleak’. “At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard…” This is clearly show to reader that is a dismal place and not very pleasant and it not safe to a child to be there. The place that Dickens described is a churchyard and the way he describe, it make reader can feel, can hear everything in that scene and know clearly what is going on is like you’re one of characters that in the play. The language that Dickens used is powerful because when want to describe something in black he’s not using the same word all the time he always change it all the time to make it look interesting and to make it more powerful. Dickens also compared something to another thing to make a play come out good. This is why it makes me think that this is the most powerful scene that Dickens had described.