Explore Dickens use of language to create setting and character in the Great Expectations. - page 3
Keywords: Dickens Great Expectations language setting character
By Jenny on 02/07/2009
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 3 of 3 pages: 1 2 3
adding another strange and new occurrence to what is already a becoming quite peculiar and surreal affair. Furthermore the fact that the convict’s clothes are described as “old” and “broken” indicates that this is a reflection of the convict and he is also aged and crippled. The convict is described in a long and detailed descriptive paragraph typical of Dickens, also using effective alliteration, for example, “glared and growled”.
Towards the end of the chapter Dickens again describes the marshes, “[they] were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed.”
Once more Dickens uses language effectively to describe the location, for example the marshes are “black” signifying that they are lifeless and desolate, while the sky is “angry” and “red” as though the place itself is fierce and wrathful.
He goes onto say that, “I could faintly make out the only two black things standing upright … the other a gibbet with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again.”
This is effective as Pip mixes up the images of the dead pirate and the convict in his head adding to his fear even more.
Dickens also uses personification, “…as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered if they thought so too.” Dickens convincingly uses the language to show us how all this distresses Pip until “… [he] was frightened again and ran home without stopping.”
This chapter sets up the events to come by introducing a sense of the characterless and grim land that Pip inhabits and which is built on in the rest of the book. Additionally we are introduced to the writer’s skill with language when he portrays the place and characters, showing his skill at detailed descriptions and demonstrating how effectively he uses the language.
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