Sypmathy for Pip and the Convict in the Opening Chapter of Great Expectations

Great Expectations

How does dickens enable the reader to sympathise with pip and the convict in the opening chapter of great expectations?

On Christmas Eve, Phillip Pirrip nicknamed Pip, an orphan boy raised by his sister Mrs. Joe Gargery and her husband encounters a frightening man in the bleak village churchyard overgrown with nettles. The man, a convict who had escaped from a prison ship, scares Pip into stealing him some food and a file to grind away his leg shackle. Pip's kindness warms the convict's heart. The convict, however, waits many years to truly show his gratitude.

The novel is written in the first person perspective and the story is unravelled from Pip’s point of view, who is also the protagonist of the story. However the only drawback from this is that we don’t see the views of any other characters but only Pips, making the novel biased.

Dickens presents Pip’s family history through Pip’s description of the tombstones. He does this by making Pip read out the names of dead family members from the tombstones. Both of Pip’s parents were dead and all of his siblings had died as infants, which makes the reader sympathise for Pip.

Life in the 19th century as an orphan boy looked horrible in Great Expectations. The reason for this is that, the way Pip was treated by his sister was harsh and cruel and his sister felt that Pip was a “Burden” upon her. Pip received hardly any compassion from his sister which was literally his only blood relative, so this was pretty sad making the image of an orphan boy’s life, dreary and miserable.

The language Dickens uses in Great Expectations makes the atmosphere cold, frightening and mysterious. “I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churc...

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...ct had left Pip was more at ease.

Pips character at this point is a little boy getting terrorized by a big cruel man.

However there is some sympathy between the convict and the reader because, the convict is only doing what he’s doing to survive, so it’s almost like do or die.

What connects Pip and the convict are two characters which are neglected and hurt so they’re almost similiar but different because Pip is just a little boy with a cruel and uncaring sister and the convict is a big man with the law after him.

Victorian society at the time was very cruel and hard because life was very difficult to make a living out of so there was alot of poor people and some people even had to turn to stealing to survive. So there was alot of overcrowding in prisons and there was alot of death sentences. To sum up, life back in the 19th century was very hard.