Developing life story Essay

Great-Expectations is just one novel that follows a tradition of novels that choose to focus on one particular character and their developing life story. Other novels that follow this same tradition are Adam Bede (1959) and Jude The Obscure (1894) which I may use as comparative texts due to the fact all three books/novels are written around the same time and tend to high light crime death and poverty using similar techniques. Death, crime and poverty feature strongly in the vast majority of fiction during the Victorian era. Many authors including Charles Dickens thought by repeatedly writing about the harsh inhuman conditions that many poor people were succumb to that the middle and upper classes would gradually begin to change there stigmatisms and prejudices. â€Å"Great-Expectations† concentrates mainly on two sections of Pip’s life, Pip as a young bashful child and the mature sophisticated Pip that develops as his life unfolds. Both Pips I think paint a very diverce picture of Victorian life one being Pip in a ramshackle unpleasant environment the other being Pip in a lavish gentlemanly one. In the opening paragraph, we are introduced to Pip who is the main character in the novel. We know that Pip is a young child because he describes him self in having an infant tongue that cannot pronounce the word Pirrip his fathers name or his Christian name Philip. Other indications that Pip is in the early stages of his life are that he thinks that the words on his mothers and fathers grave stone some how illustrate to him what they may of looked liked. â€Å"The shape of the letters on my father’s grave stone gave me the odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair† I believe this to be a obvious indication that Pip is a fairly young child aged around six to eight. Pip is visiting his mothers and fathers grave stone in a churchyard he describes as being a bleak place, over grown with nettles Pips overall location is some where on the marshes I know this for certain because he says â€Å"Ours was the marsh country down by the river. † Pip is a young child in a church graveyard by himself with only dead people for company, so I can see why he appears to be unsettled. By the end of the text, Pip has been reduced to a small bundle of shivers growing afraid of the church setting and beginning to cry. Crime and death is rife in this section when Pip tells us what his most vivid memory of his of his early childhood is he chooses to mention a church graveyard he visited on a raw afternoon. Therefore, death has clearly had a major effect throughout his life if this memory is so vivid and easy to remember in later years. Whilst at the graveyard yard Pip is not only visiting his mother and father he has also gone to pay his respects to his five older brothers who all died as infants. As you can see, infant mortality was very high in this time period and a recurring problem the five dead infants would have died of disease or at birth, primitive maternity was to blame. In the early Victorian times, only twenty per cent of the British population lived in towns. By 1901, it had risen on over seventy-five percent. London was the largest but other towns also grew just as rapidly. Because there were so many people in such a small, area feeding your family was problematical, finding a job was nearly impossible. Workers houses were built in the centre of towns close to factories. The houses were over crowed and it was nearly always two to three in a bed some times more. City streets were filthy as there were no proper sewers or drains and the air was polluted with smoke from the factory chimneys. Pregnant woman living in these conditions could easily pick up infections and minor illnesses witch would result in infant death The word â€Å"gibbet† was used in reference to death in this section, a gibbet was something that criminals were hung from. The government in the Victorian era tried to keep order with harsh punishments especially for crimes against people’s property. Small crimes could be punished by whipping or branding with a hot iron. Some criminals were tied to the pillory this was a post in a public place where people could throw rotten food or even stones at them. The worst punishment for a crime was hanging people could be hung for 200 different crimes most of these crimes would be considered very minor today. Pickpockets and burglars could be hung next to murders and rapists and I think that Charles Dickens had a major problem with this aspect of the English legal system and set out to try to make a difference by writing in hope he might influence those in power. Dickens believed reform was needed to alleviate poverty, which he felt was the main cause of crimes against person and poverty. Dickens thought that the judicial system was designed to protect the rich and elite. He particularly abhorred the brutality surrounding these punishments An Extract From Charles Dickens letter to the Times News Paper I went there with the intension of observing the crowd gathered to behold it†¦ I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the intense crowed collected at this execution this morning could be imagined by no man†¦. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murders to it faded in my mind. I think that Charles Dickens creates an excellent setting to affect his characters different behavioural patterns. He uses a range of different techniques to accomplish this such as imagery. Some examples of this are where it says â€Å"this bleak place over grown with nettles† I think this is an excellent example of just some of the bits of imagery he uses. By placing Pip in a bleak place bleak meaning barren and desolate and then to make this place over grown with nettles will undoubtedly stir emotions and provoke a reaction with any character especially Pip. Doing this will also create a tense atmosphere. Pip is placed in a scenario where he doesn’t know his parents or his five brothers due to circumstances beyond his control; he has suffered tremendous loss at such a young age. Then he’s placed in a unfruitful setting where there’s nobody around. This is an excellent combination if you are trying to get a entertaining and interesting reaction from one of your characters the climax of all these different factors working together is when Pip breaks down crying the text decries him as a being a bundle if shivers this has clearly effected both Pips behaviour and his feelings. I as a reader was made to share Pip’s experiences in many ways I think that the way that Charles Dickens skips in and out of reality is extremely effective more to the people he aimed his novel at than me today. People of the Victorian period would have been able to relate to many aspects of the first few pages; the feature of infant mortality and the notorious gibbet would have been very real topics to them. Charles Dickens uses very descriptive language to try and explain things to the reader as much as possible this in its self-makes the reader feel more involved and makes the text appear more real. Another way Charles Dickens helped me share Pip’s experiences was through imagery I thought that painting a mental picture in my mind was very beneficial in trying to help me share Pip’s feeling and emotions. I particularly felt in Pip’s shoes when the animals were frightening him. The next time we meet Pip he describes the setting he’s in as being a â€Å"rimy morning† and â€Å"damp†. I think that Pip is in his bedroom looking out on to the marshes I say this because in the same paragraph Pip says, â€Å"I’ve seen the damp lying outside of my window. † I homed in on the word my in this statement and that’s why I came to that conclusion. I can only assume that Pip is the same age he was when he had his experience in the church graveyard. The reason I say this is because Pip doesn’t seem to have developed in any way, he’s still seems to be the immature child he was when went to visit his mother, father, and siblings at the graveyard and doesn’t seem to have changed any. Since the last time we met Pip he was told to steal some food for a convict that escaped from the â€Å"hulks†. Hulks were huge prison ships that were anchored around a mile out to sea the reason for this was that hardly any people were able to swim at this time let alone poor people. The food on the hulks was so bad that most men melted candle wax into there soup to try to make it more nourishing. Early prisons in this period were so crowded and dirty, that’s why hulks came about I think that they were made to try to ease the heavy burden that was on the shoulders of the English prison system.