How Does Dickens Engage and Sustain the Reader in Great Expectations?

2260 Words5 Pages

HOW DOES CHARLES DICKENS ENGAGE THE READER IN GREAT EXPECTATIONS?

FOCUS ON CHAPTERS 1-8

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is considered to be the greatest

book he has ever sold. By the time Charles Dickens had started his

thirteenth novel, Great Expectations, he was a national hero. After

living as a shoe polisher, the upper class citizens of England started

to realise through his writing what was happening to their fellow

lower class citizens. Dickens’ excellence in this book is shown right

throughout. However, the way he engages the reader is even more

fascinating. He uses many techniques and devices to engage the reader.

Jus the title “Great Expectations” is a huge surprise and the reader

would like to know what the “Great Expectation” is.

The gothic genre, in the 1860’s was a very popular genre, because it

was still very new. The new tradition of the novel of suspense,

horror, fear, and superstition that began with Horace Walpole's The

Castle of Otranto (1764), was continued into the nineteenth-century by

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This popular genre was then used by

Dickens in Great Expectations in the form of Magwitch, and the

sometimes suspenseful Pip. It is also shown right throughout the novel

in the form of the settings on the novel. For example, on page 1 “…and

that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with

dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was

the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and

that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the

sea” and in chapter 8 “…and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of

the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower

were rustily ...

... middle of paper ...

...urth

chapter he ends it just as the guards have come to the door of Joe’s

house. Dickens deliberately does this to encourage the reader to read

on and find out what happens as the guards enter.” Are they here for

Pip? Have they caught Pip helping the convict? “These questions

encourage the reader to carry on reading.

Charles Dickens has used many techniques in his novel “Great

Expectations” to engage the reader from the outset of the novel. Many

techniques such as the use of gothic genre, the gothic settings and

the unusual characters in the novel really engage the reader to read

further on. He also cleverly formats the novel in many chapters with

cliffhangers to preserve the reader’s attention. Dickens cleverly

combines the above techniques to engage the reader. His elegant

writing allows the reader to understand the novel and to stay

contained in it.

Open Document