How Dickens Creates Characters that are Both Striking and Memorable

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How Dickens Creates Characters that are Both Striking and Memorable

Dickens creates characters that are both striking and memorable in

Great Expectations. His style of writing produces plausible,

three-dimensional and psychologically complete individuals that cannot

fail to be enjoyable and memorable to all who experience them. He also

cleverly uses them to show different emotions and aspects of human

nature that do not change with time.

Charles dickens is probably the best known of all British novelists.

Born in 1812, Dickens had an unhappy childhood as his parents were

always in debt and his father was sent to debtor's prison. After

working in a blackening factory he then became the first clerk in a

solicitors office. Dickens, though still uneducated, worked hard and

in 1834 became a parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle.

From this point, his life got better and come to publish some of the

best novels of all time such as Oliver twist, A Christmas Carol, and

Great Expectations. Dickens wrote in the style of Victorian realism -

realistic and detailed, often harrowing and grim. Dickens had a

reputation as being quite a ladies man and although he was married, to

Katherine, he had many other lovers.

Great Expectations is the story of Pip's life, from when he was a

young boy to when he is an older gentleman in London. At the start of

the book Pip finds a starving criminal, Magwitch, in the graveyard

where his parents are buried. He steals food for this man from his

family, and takes it to the Kent marshes where he stumbles in to a

scared man, whom he mistakes for Magwitch. This man becomes the

villain of the story. Pip joins a manhunt for Magwitch who is then

recaptured and sent to Australia where he becomes a sheep farmer.

Meanwhile, Pip meets Estella, Miss Havisham's adopted child and from

then on Estella becomes Pip's love interest throughout the book. Later

in the book Pip receives a very large sum of money from an anonymous

benefactor, thought by Pip to be Miss Havisham.

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