Preview

How Does Dickens Use Setting In Great Expectations

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
538 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does Dickens Use Setting In Great Expectations
When people think about a good story, some think of the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. There are many causes for why it is such an amazing piece of literary work, but one of the most prominent is how he uses setting to his advantage. In the book, Charles Dickens writes about the life of a young boy named Pip. As he grows up and becomes a man, he meets many different people and goes to countless places. During his lifetime, he goes to the misty marshes, the forge where he was raised, the house of Miss Havisham, and so on. All of these places convey a different feel that helps the reader understand why the characters act in different ways at different locations. Charles Dickens utilizes the setting in his novel in order to explain the mood of the …show more content…
These wetlands are always described as ambiguous, mysterious, and unclear. The symbols of the marsh often reflect the contents of the book itself. One example of creating the feel with setting is when Pip is at the marshes at the beginning of the book. While he was there, he was assaulted by a convict who took advantage of him. At that moment, Pip seemed unclear and ambiguous, which is very similar to the characteristics of the bog itself. While the marshes set the tone of uncertainty in the story, there are many other locations that gave the book a different tone.

When Pip first goes to the Satis House as a young boy, he is amazed at the size and stature of the decaying home. However, the fact that the house is so poorly cleaned and basically falling apart suggests a shadow of dejection and despair has been cast over the house. This coincides with how Miss Havisham acts in most parts of the novel. She too, like the house, always appears to be in a constant state of depression. Although the Satis House conveys a lot of the stories tone, Joe’s forge also has a part to play in the feel of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Miss Havisham is an immensely rich and grim lady who lives in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion. Mrs. Joe is very delighted to send Pip to her house because Pip’s future may be made by his going to her house. Also, a fortune may come out of it.…

    • 4153 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Analyze Miss Peregrine's

    • 618 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Takes place in two particular areas that reflect the tone of the story. A fair sized town in America and a small secluded island in the Whales. The American town is parallel of what is supposed to be reality, and the island, full of secrets, is fantasy. When you step back and take a closer look, you see that American town hides more from the characters, making it fantasy and lies, while the enchanting island is far more forth coming about its problems.…

    • 618 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Night is a work by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father in the Nazi Germany concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945 (Night book.). Elie became motivated to write this novel because he felt he was obligated to share the gruesome experiences felt by Jews during that time period. Many scholars agree that “Elie Wiesel wrote the book "Night" as a memoir of his experiences as a Jew during the Holocaust. He calls himself a "messenger of the dead among the living" through his literary witness” (Why did Elie Wiesel write the book night?). This proves that he felt responsible to address this experience and make certain that the genocide that stripped him of his identity and childhood…

    • 680 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Expectations. Having expectations could change one’s life. One can induce change within themselves or it can be influenced by others. This concept is noticeable with Pip, the main character in the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Pip is an orphan boy who lives in Kent, England with his abusive sister, Mrs. Joe, and his sympathetic uncle, Joe Gargery. He searches for value as a person in becoming a gentleman and in earning the love of Estella, an orphan adopted by Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster. Throughout his journey, Pip matures from having innocence to losing innocence, marking his change in character and expectations. In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip transforms when he encounters a convict, visits Satis House, and experiences London.…

    • 716 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The firs chapter of ‘Great Expectations’ establishes the plot outline for the story whilst sill introducing, its main characters, Pip and his world. As both narrator and protagonist, Pip is naturally the most important character in ‘Great Expectations’: the novel is his story, told in his words, and his insights define the events and characters of the book. As a result, Dickens most important task as a writer in ‘Great Expectations’ is the creation of Pip’s character. Pip’s voice tells his story thus dickens must make his voice believably human while also ensuring that it conveys all the necessary information relevant to the plot.…

    • 688 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Pip’s hometown of Kent is where the book opens up, it “was a marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, tweny miles of the sea” (pg 1). Within the town, around the churchyards criminals are always presently lurking about and because the town is so near the ocean, the mists hung around and not only gave a visual of the murkiness of the area, but also represented the ominous atmosphere.…

    • 2283 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    ‘Great Expectations’ is a best selling novel, written during the reign of Queen Victoria, by the well known author Charles Dickens. This novel was serialised as each chapter would be published in a weekly magazine. Dickens would have to deliberately make each chapter interesting and addictive in order for people to buy the next publishing.…

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    As Pip grows up her realizes that life is full of pain and struggle. Pip learns that, “Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a convenience, a string for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand...”…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story Great Expectations is best viewed through the class studies critical lens with a contrast between rich and poor. Miss Havisham’s estate and Uncle Pumblechook are comparable to the life of Pip and the family he lives with because they are upper class and lower class.…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Pip's Perceptions

    • 1503 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Pip’s changing perceptions of himself, the world, and the people he interacts with are affected by various characters throughout Stage One of the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. In this section of the story, Pip’s life is centered upon the Forge and the Satis House. The characters in these settings alter and shape his developing character and paradigms of the world by either nurturing and caring for him, treating him without regard to his feelings, or by exposing him to how different people perceive contentment. The characters that most directly affect his perceptions are Joe and Biddy, Mrs. Joe and his Uncle Pumblechook, and Miss Havisham and Estella.…

    • 1503 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Pip first meets Miss Havisham when he is summoned to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Satis house is set in a very upper class area but is very run down, the windows and doors are barred and locked, to keep people in as well as out. Its gothic architecture adds to the dark and brooding image of the house and its occupant. The reader’s first introduction to Miss Havisham occurs when Pip enters her room which is gloomy and lit only by candlelight. She is dressed in rich materials, silks, satins and lace, all in white which has now yellowed and shabby with age very similar to her jaundiced attitude towards men. She continued to wear her veil, a pagan representation of virginity and dried and decayed flowers in her hair. In contrast she wears shining jewels around her hands and neck. He observes that the dress that she is wearing had been put on the figure of a young woman and the carcass on which it now hangs had shrunk to skin and bone. The gloomy and decaying theme continues throughout Pip’s encounters with Miss Havisham. Dickens uses words like “faded”, “no brightness”, “like black fungus” and “the daylight was completely excluded” to relate the atmosphere of both the house and it’s inhabitant.…

    • 1533 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Masque of the Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe uses of symbolism of the clock, the seventh room ,and the Red Death/Corpse figure to develop the theme of death is inevitable. The theme conveyed through the story of The Masque of the Red Death is death is inevitable and time is running out.…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    belonging

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Pip’s Parents have passed resulting in Pip having to take refuge with his sister and brother in law, Pip lives an ordinary yet complicated life there until his uncle Pumblechook shows him to Miss Havisham who is an awfully strange woman with a beautiful adopted daughter named Estella. Miss Havisham is the richest woman and can often show many prejudices, raising Estella in this environment. Pip begins to live with them and falls in love with Estella who is of high socio-economic status and rejects Pip and mocks him. Miss Havisham also doesn’t accept his feelings and only supports him to become a blacksmith with his brother in law Mr Joe. Soon later…

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Great Expectations Essay

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Throughout this bildungsroman novel, Miss Havisham is seen in a mental and physical prison that makes her burdened and desolate. Miss Havisham at one time used to be a bliss and doting woman but when she was left at the altar by her fiancé on her wedding day, it tears Miss Havisham’s heart. This tragic event makes Miss Havisham seek revenge on all males and to this day she still has not forgotten what occurred that despondent night. In fact Miss Havisham stayed in the same room of the altar where “No glimpse of daylight was to be seen” (Dickens 55). Her bridal dress from years before “was faded and yellow….” (Dickens 56). Miss Havisham’s dolefulness and grief put her in a mental prison in which she loses touch of the outside world and is trapped in time and space. She also physically imprisons herself in one room of her house where nothing can make her forgive men as people. This makes Miss Havisham very bitter and also the prison in which she cannot let go of the past causes her great strife and pain for others, such as Pip and her adopted daughter Estella.…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In this essay I am going to discuss how play is a framework for learning in early childhood education in New Zealand and the role of a teacher in implementing a play based curriculum. I will also be discussing 2 theoretical perspectives in relation to play.…

    • 1813 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays