The setting of a novel or film or any other story is one of the most important and useful ways to analyse a character and to find out what they are like and how they can or could react with their environment. A novelist or a director has to describe to a reader or a viewer everything that is going on (i. e. sounds, sights, smells) in the character’s world. In some cases the environment can tell a lot more about the character than the then the character’s appearance alone. A novelist or a director has also to make the character and the environment contrast or compliment each other.
Charles Dickens, why did he write ‘Great Expectations’? Charles dickens was highly concerned about the welfare and well being of the lower class people of 1800’s. He was especially concerned about the welfare and well being of children and also women. He could, both now and then, be referred to as a social commentator. He was born in 1812 to a father who worked for the Navy pay office. His early years (spent mainly with his father) gave him many opportunities to see life along the Thames, as he went on and off boats with his father.
His educational life, however, was not as good as the life e enjoyed along the Thames. He attended a small school until he was eleven years old when his family moved to the cramped city of London. When he was twelve years old he was forced to work under horrible conditions shared with vermin and disease putting labels on inkbottles, which by the way he hated with the utmost intensity. Soon after this his father was put into deters prison then his mother and also his five siblings were put into the same prison.
Charles Dickins visited his family on many regular occasions. Charles never forgot this experience and it stayed with him until his end. He later became determined to not become bankrupt and end up with his father and family. He soon found a job working at a paper and magazine. He later worked for various other papers and magazines writing stories and cartoons. He did all this until he finally made his very own monthly magazine. He used his past experiences in all of the papers and magazines that he worked for (including his own).
Dickins wrote about his past experiences of poverty, misery and the ugly side of life in the capital of the ‘Great Empire’. The readers of Charles Dickins work loved it as it usually reflected their own life they also iked it because his work usually ended with a happy ending, he did this deliberately to give the common people a false sense and hope that they too could escape to a happy and well deserved ending just like Dickins’s fictional characters. Dickens used a variety of genres in his work. In his later work he combined many genres together in one particular novel (‘Great Expectations’).
Many of the novels he wrote contained pathos as it was much more ‘real life’ as to have pathos in your everyday life was normal in the time the book was released. Other genres he used included: Romance, Mystery, Crime, Comedy and Sentiment. Dickins created the setting for ‘Great Expectations’ (the Kent marches) to give the previously mentioned genres and emotions effects on the readers. He (Dickins) made his reader’s aveare with Pip’s lack of opportunity in the Kent marches and his lack of opportunity for his future.
Dickens also wanted his readers to acknowledge that Pip was very much alone and isolated in the ‘remote and desolate’ Kent marches, this may have been to intentionally make the readers (who were usually in poverty, the underclass) feel that they themselves were at least lucky and thankful that hey were not alone on the ‘remote, desolate, cold’ Kent marches in the ‘howling wind’ with no one but your self for company as this boy was and that they were lucky to be with other people, family and people that love them.
Dickins’ use of language builds up imagery, emotion, emotions and tension. Dickens has obviously worded his novel ‘Great Expectations’ very carefully as it has, ever since, been a great success. He uses language to show the reader how the characters are feeling, which can be difficult to show in a film. Dickins changes the tense of his paragraphs quite frequently from ‘I ound out for certain’, still in the same paragraph, to ‘the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip. ‘.
Dickens also purposely gave Pip polite and charming language to give added realism as in his era that is how children were expected to be like and behave like and furthermore that is how the children of that time did behave this makes it fit in with the time that it was written “‘O! Don’t cut my throat, sir’, I pleaded in terror. ‘Pray don’t do it, sir”, notice the use of “sir” and “pray” especially in this potentially life threatening ituation and with all the trauma and horror placed upon this boy it is remarkable that he is still polite to this scary man (I know that I wouldn’t be if I were Pip, even in this era).
Pip remains polite to the man ” A fearful man, all in course grey with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied around his head”. This quote shows that even though the man is manhandling Pip and threatening him with a speech “Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat! ” Pip is constantly polite and good-natured as he was expected to be. Dickins uses language to allow the reader to create a mental environment in hich they (the reader) become very much apart of. This involves the reder enticing them to read on and find out what happens in their world next.
Dickens uses very complex sentences and language. Dickens seems to use a very ‘long winded’ way to say something simple instead of just, simply, saying the short meaning, for example dickens writes: ‘ to five little lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their graves, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine-who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in hat universal struggle-1 which instead of saying five stones are left to the memory of five of my siblings-who died in infancy, this show just how complex Dickins’ language really is.
Dickins uses his language to build up a climax and tension in this case he builds up to Pip becoming upset and scared in the graveyard isolated from all civilisation and help! Then Dickins goes on and builds up to a horror scene when Magwich, the convict, enters the scene. Magwich is portrayed as a horrible, scary, dirty man (the list is endless). This is then built upon to make the reader worry about what is going to happen to Pip next.
