Analysis Of Charles Dickens Great Expectations

The three-part series of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, uses impassioned imagery to draw a mental and physical picture for the audience. Every setting in Dickens’s book discloses more about Pip than the last one. In a way, Pip’s surroundings bring out different attributes in him, affecting him direct or indirectly. No single setting does this book justice, more or less a collage of environments that determine the outcome of Pip’s story. The author exercises the setting to his advantage in more than one way, utilizing the ambiance as symbolism with the novel’s theme. Charles Dickens writes Great Expectations with bounteous contrasts and similarities such as social confinement, the environment, and perception in the northern Kent marshes

If Pip had not met the convict in the marshes, then he would have no benefactor. If Pip had not returned to the marshes, thenceforth, he would live his life without closure, leaving his true friends behind. He “I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, like the old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which had subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the mists were solemnly rising, and when I laid my hand upon the village finger-post, smote upon my heart again.” ( Dickens, 240). Dickens craftily uses the mists from northern Kent to describe what Pip perceives in his head. This particular quotation has to do with Estella and how Pip is not thinking clearly about his future. Perhaps the mists represent false values implicated by Pip in the beginning, such as being a gentleman and loving Estella. His judgement remains clouded until he reaches the fair conditions of Joe and Biddy’s wedding in chapter fifty-eight. Also, a blue sky could be perceived as good weather for a positive ending for Joe and Biddy. The sunny marsh is proof that Pip finally reveals that affection and loyalty are more important that social advancement and wealth.

Through and through, Great Expectations delivers more than a story told through the characters, but also through the surroundings of the characters. Dickens unique perspective on dialogue and ambience creates wonderful scenes that eventually contrast with each other. From the greedy boy that Pip left north Kent with, to the caring man he returned as, nothing would have been quite the same without the right framework. Pip’s perception on his surroundings changes as the backdrop changes with him, all the while in his fluctuating social class that brings him back to lower class