Creating Memorable Characters in Great Expectations

How does Charles Dickens create characters that are both memorable and

striking in the novel Great Expectations?

In the novel ‘Great Expectations,’ Charles Dickens has managed to

create several strong characters that are both memorable and striking

and which definitely grab the reader’s attention. He uses a variety of

techniques to make the characters seem so real.

Take the character of Pip for example. His full name is Phillip Pirrip

although he could never pronounce it properly and all he could manage

was Pip, so that stuck with him. The audience instinctively pictures a

small, cute, friendly boy. As the story is written from this small

child’s point of view, you see the story through his own eyes. By

doing this, certain parts of the story appear differently to the

reader, as it isn’t an adult telling you their story and what they

have experienced. For example, when Pip firsts meets Magwitch, he

finds him so terrifying as he seems a lot bigger and more powerful

than himself.

Pip always talks with a polite tongue and never speaks out of place.

This shows that Pip, although having been brought up by a poor family

and lost his parents and brothers very young, has still been raised

well. Even when Magwitch is threatening young Pip and turns him upside

down, he still talks courteously and with respect.

The reader’s feel sympathy towards Pip as he obviously misses his

parents a lot and will never get the chance to meet them. Although a

low class family has brought up Pip, we know that Pip is relatively

clever and very imaginative. We know this as the way that Pip imagines

what his parents looked like is by the writing on their tombstones.

“The shape of the letters on my father’s grave, gave me the odd...

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...tremely sad and upset and returns back to the empty house,

which once housed the eccentric woman and the girl she raised. When he

arrives, he finds Estella sitting inside. Her partner had left her and

she had stopped her life just like Miss. Havisham had all those years

before.

Pip is extremely annoyed and rips open all of the windows to bring the

light flooding back. He believes the house is old and cursed and tells

Estella that she can’t stay here. Pip and Estella instinctively fall

in love and leave together to enjoy the rest of their life together.

I believe that Charles Dickens created so many memorable characters in

‘Great Expectations’ by giving them such deep and interesting

personalities and history. As he puts so much descriptive writing into

the story, it helps the reader’s to get right into the plot

experiencing what happens alongside Pip.