Great Expectations: Story, Textual Analysis and Critical Discussion of Part 1 (Chapters 1- 7)

1. Great Expectations: Story, Textual Analysis and Critical Discussion of Part 1 (Chapters 1- 7) Dr. SarwetRasul

2. Review of the Previous Lesson • Introduction to the Novel to Study: Great Expectations • Charles Dickens: The Author of Great Expectations • Times when Great Expectations was Written • Setting of the novel • Genre and Form of the Novel • Plot and Structure of the Novel • Introduction to major and minor characters

3. Structure of the novel • How would we explore the novel?

4. Today’s Session • Moving through the text of chapters (1-7) of part 1 • Exploring themes • Discussing the development of characters • Critically analyzing • Discussing points to ponder

5. Part I: Chapter 1 • The story opens with the narrator, Pip, who introduces himself and describes an image of himself as a boy, standing alone and crying in a churchyard near some marshes. Young Pip is staring at the gravestones of his parents, who died soon after his birth. This young shivering boy is suddenly terrified by the harsh voice of a man who threatens to cut Pip's throat if he doesn't stop crying. • The man is dressed in a prison uniform with a great iron shackle around his leg. • He grabs the boy and shakes him upside down, emptying his pockets. • A piece of bread fall from the pocket of Pip which the man starts devouring at. • Answering the questions of the convict, Pip tells him that he is an orphan and that he lives with his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery. He also tells him that Mrs. Joe is married to a blacksmith who lives about a mile from the church. • The man tells Pip that if he wants to live, he'll go down to his house and bring him back some food and a file to cut the shackle on his leg. • Pip agrees to meet him early the next morning and the man disappears in the marshes.

6. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis • Dickens gets right to the action. Within the first few paragraphs, he has introduced the main character, has given the location of the story, revealed that Pip is an orphan with five dead brothers, and introduced the conflict: a convict in need of help. • As far as the setting of the scene is concerned, it is " . . . a bleak place overgrown with nettles . . . dark flat wilderness . . . intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it.“ • Dickens introduces us in detail to Pip, who serves as both the young protagonist of the novel as well as the story's narrator looking back on his own story as an adult. With this two-level approach, Dickens leads the reader through young Pip's life with the immediacy and surprise of a first person narration while at the same time guiding with an omnipotent narrator who knows how it will all turn out. The adult narrator Pip will foreshadow future events throughout the story by using signs and symbols. • The choice of the retrospective first-person narrator is effective because the reader immediately feels part of an intimate and confessional conversation. • Dickens uses this duality to great effect in the first chapter, where we are personally introduced to Pip as if we were in a pleasant conversation with him: "I give Pirrip as my father's family name..." Immediately after this, however, we are thrown into the point of view of a terrified young child being mauled by an escaped convict.

7. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis Pip’s name: • MY FATHER'S FAMILY name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

8. Cont…Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis The relationship between Pip and the Convict: • At first, the relationship appears to be based solely on power and fear. The man yells at the boy only to get what he wants, a file and some food, and the boy only responds for fear of his life. And yet, after they part, the young Pip keeps looking back at the man as he walks alone into the marshes. • The image of the man holding his arms around him, alone on the horizon save a pole associated with the death of criminals, is strikingly familiar to the initial image of young Pip, holding himself in the cold, alone in the churchyard with the stones of his dead parents. For a moment, then, the relationship seems to warm. They share a common loneliness and a common marginalization from society, the orphan and the escaped convict. Even while he is afraid, Pip instinctively displays a sympathetic reaction. • What will this meeting lead to ? • This initial meeting, between a small boy and a convict, will develop into the central relationship in the book. It is the relationship which will cause Pip's great expectations for himself to rise and fall.

9. Part I: Chapter 2 • Pip runs home to his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and her husband, Joe Gargery. • Mrs. Joe is a loud, angry, nagging woman. • She believes in raising by the stick. • She constantly reminds Pip and her husband Joe of the difficulties she has gone through to raise Pip and take care of the house. • In these times of tension it is Joe who offers refuge ad solace. In fact he is more of an equal and a friend than a paternal figure. Under the tyrant rule of Mrs. Joe they are united. • Pip has the thought of stealing bread on his nerves. • During the dinner, Pip nervously steals a piece of bread. • Early the next morning, Pip steals food and a pork pie from the pantry shelf and a file from Joe's forge. • Then he rushes back to the marshes.

10. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis • Theme of Child Abuse: • The reader's sympathy once again is directed at Pip who not only lost his parents but is being raised by a raging, bitter woman. A common criticism inherent in many of Dickens' novels is the abuse of children in society at large. Although he paints Mrs. Joe in a rather humorous light at times, the reader is still keenly aware of the fear in which this poor child grew up.

11. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis Dickens’ art of characterization: • " With the convict's use of w's in his words — (wittles instead of vittles) and the convict's eating style (similar to that of a large dog snapping up mouthfuls and watching for danger), Dickens defines the convict's social class, education level, current life situation, as well as his feelings about that. The description of Mrs. Gargery (Mrs. Joe) as having a heavy hand that she uses much on Pip and her husband, as well as Pip's description of his sister's method of buttering his bread and getting pins from her bib stuck in the bread, tell a great deal about her nature, how her marriage works, and what Pip thinks of her, too.

12. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis Dickens’ art of characterization: Some TEXT • “My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much.”

13. Part I: Chapter 3 • The next morning, Pip quietly leaves the house and reaches the marshes. • He finds a man, wet and cold and dressed like a convict. However, it turns out that the man is not the same convict who had threatened him the night before, rather he is another convict. • This man has a badly bruised face and wears a broad-brimmed hat. We need to remember that these are going to be important clues for certain identities as well as happenings in future. • Anyhow, he runs away from Pip without speaking to him. Pip finally finds the convict whom he had met earlier, and gives him the food and the file. • As the convict files at his shackle, Pip leaves him and returns home.

14. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis • Theme of Relationships: • With reference to the relationship of Pip and the convict it can be noticed that their second meeting shows that their bond is strengthening. Pip looks at the convict in a more sympathetic light than the first. Pip even puts away his fear to say, "I am glad you enjoy it," as the convict eats. Since he stole the food and file, Pip is now the convict's partner in crime and feels closer to the man. • Great Expectations has some elements of mystery and suspense. In this chapter we see these elements at work. • Dickens uses secrets as a way of heightening suspense throughout the novel. Partially the reason is that originally the novel was published in episodes, and Dickens had to retain the interest of the readers to persuade them to by the next magazine.

15. Theme of Secrecy: • In Dickens’ work suspense is created as someone is always hiding something from someone else. Sometimes these secrets are clear to the reader and the reader is a partner in crime with the characters, as we are with Pip as he sneaks around his house, terrified of getting caught, stealing food. Other times the reader is left out of the secret but we are given the impression that it is an important thing that we need to find out, as in the case of the two convicts. We know that there is some connection between the two that is important to the story but we are given very few clues to help us.

16. More insights: Chapters 1-3 These chapters introduce several themes such as: • Relationships • Love and fear • Right and wrong • Good and evil • Justice and guilt. Pips strange relationship with the convict is established. His relationship with his sister and brother-in-law is also established which leads to the themes of love and hatred. Pip struggles with the wrong of stealing for a convict and the good of caring for a suffering human being. He also feels guilty for just being alive. From infancy, his sister has never let him forget he owes his existence to her; he is saturated with this guilt.

17. More insights: Chapters 1-3 Theme of guilt: TEXT as evidence • (TEXT) “The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, “A boy with Somebody-else's pork pie! Stop him!” The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, “Holloa, young thief!” One black ox, with a white cravat on—who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air—fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, “I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't for myself I took it!” Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail.”

18. More insights: Chapters 1-3 • Humor and satire are important tools in these chapters, as well. Pip, for example, always calls his parents by the only names he knows: "Philip Pirrip, late of this parish" and "also Georgiana, wife of the above." His deceased brothers are described as "the five little stone lozenges." Even Pip's politeness to the convict, requesting to be held right-side up and expressing delight that the convict enjoys the stolen food, are funny. A bit of satire shows up when the stick used to beat Pip is referred to as the "Tickler."

19. More insights: Chapters 1-3 Art of characterization: Development of Characters: See the text • He was gobbling mincemeat, meat bone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen. Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the marsh........... • I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating, and the man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably, I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.

20. Part I: Chapter 4 • Pip returns home to find Mrs. Joe preparing the house for Christmas dinner. • As she is busy, and is in a cross mood like always, she keeps pushing Pip and Joe out of her way. • Pip is very much tensed. He fears that his theft will be discovered any moment. When Joe asks him to go with him to church he is relieved to accompany him. • She has invited Mr. Wopsle, the church clerk, Mr. Hubble the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble and Uncle Pumblechook. • Dinner is a nightmare for Pip: The table is in his chest, Pumblechook's elbow is in his eye, and he is served the scraps of food no one wants. • The discussion over dinner was how fortunate Pip should feel about being raised "by hand" by Mrs. Joe and how much trouble she has gone through in that endeavor, though Pip's opinion was never requested.

21. Cont… Part I: Chapter 4 • The fear that he might be caught any time, makes the dinner a nightmare for Pip. • Every time he thinks she will find it Pip clutches the table leg in nervousness. When the moment passes, he releases it. • Mr. Pumblechook nearly chokes on some brandy after the meal and Pip realizes that he poured tar water in the brandy bottle when he stole some for the convict. • Mrs. Joe becomes too busy in the kitchen to afford a full investigation, but then announces that she is going to present the pork pie. • Pip remains in tension though it increases or decreases every moment in that context. However, it reaches its height when finally his sister announces it is time for the savory pie. She is talking of the pie Pip gave to the convict. • Sure that he is going to get caught, Pip jumps up from the table and runs to the door, only to meet face to face with a group of soldiers standing in their doorway holding handcuffs who appear to be there to arrest him.

22. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis • Themes of Fear and guilt: • Suspense: • The suspense grows in this chapter as the reader and Pip fearfully await the discovery by Mrs. Joe of the things which are missing from the kitchen. The apprehension is kept light, however, with a foolish dialogue between the adults over how much trouble Pip is to raise for Mrs. Joe. • Relationship of Pip and Joe: A Social Commentary • The only sympathetic character is Joe, who continues to make gestures of support toward Pip. Dicken's little social commentary here is clear: It is often the dim witted and poor (Joe) who act with more grace and charity than wealthy loud mouths (Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle) who claim that they do.

23. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis Emerging themes: • Relationships: Pip and Mrs. Joe, Pip and Guests, Pip and Mr. Joe • Child abuse and religion: Child abuse and religion were often targets of Dickens satire. The adults' attack on Pip about the young never being grateful degenerates into the ridiculous when Mr. Wopsle and Pumblechook turn a conversation about pigs into a Sunday sermon and moral lecture for the young. The satire continues as Pumblechook takes great delight in describing what a butcher would do if Pip were a pig, and then telling Pip how lucky he is to be with them.

24. Injustice of Social Classes: • Another theme in these chapters is the injustice of social classes. Pip's convict is willing to forfeit his freedom to bring the other one back. There is mention of the second convict getting easier treatment because he is a gentleman. It is obvious there is a history between these two, and their fight foreshadows darker conflicts to come between them.

25. Art of characterization: • TEXT: "Uncle Pumblechook: a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to."

26. Part I: Chapter 5 • It turns out that the soldiers are not there to arrest Pip or anybody from the company. They, in fact, need a pair of handcuffs fixed by Joe. They are invited in to take some food and drinks. Mr. Joe starts repairing the handcuffs in the forge. • They are, in fact, hunting two convicts who were seen recently in the marshes. After Joe fixes the handcuffs, he, Pip, and Mr. Wopsle are allowed to follow the soldiers into the marshes. • They soon find the two convicts wrestling each other in the mud. The one with the hat accuses the other, Pip's convict, of trying to kill him, but the other replies that he would have done it if he really wanted to. Instead, he had been the one who had called for the soldiers and was willing to sacrifice himself just so the one with the hat would get caught again. • They bring the two back to a boathouse where Pip's convict, eyeing Pip, admits to stealing Mrs. Joe's pork pie by himself, thus getting Pip off the hook. • Joe and Pip watch as the two convicts are brought back to the prison ship.

27. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis Theme of Suspense: • The reader is presented with the question of why the two convicts are fighting each other. Pip's convict goes so far as to say that he deliberately got himself caught, just so he could make sure the man with the hat would go back to prison. What hatred did this man have that would make him go back to prison just to see another suffer as well? Theme of relationship and secrecy: • Relationship between the convict and Pip continues to grow as well, even though they do not speak and the convict hardly looks at him. The convict obviously wants to protect the boy and, suspecting Pip may be threatened, takes the blame for stealing the pork pie. The two are, once again, united in secrecy. Theme of Injustice: • Another theme in these chapters is the injustice of social classes. Pip's convict is willing to forfeit his freedom to bring the other one back. There is mention of the second convict getting easier treatment because he is a gentleman. It is obvious there is a history between these two, and their fight foreshadows darker conflicts to come between them.

28. Part I: Chapter 6 • Joe, Pip, and Mr. Wopsle walk back home. Pip decides not to tell Joe the truth about his file and the pork pie. In fact he fears losing this friend, and is frightened of losing his respect in the eyes of Joe. When they return, the topic of discussion is the question of how the convict managed to get into the locked house. • Mr. Pumblechook does not know anything, yet through his bombastic overbearance, Mr. Pumblechook's argument wins when he claims that the convict crawled down the chimney. • However, finally Mrs. Joe sends Pip to bed.

29. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis Theme of Fear and Guilt: • Pip's fear that Joe would "think worse of me than I was" if Pip told him about the file and pork pie. • This theme of fear recurred throughout the novel. In the personal life of Pip also this fear revisits again and again. • Joe is the only friend in the world for Pip. • He is his entire family; he is his entire society. • Pip fears to lose this companionship by telling the truth. In the future, Pip will struggle with telling the truth because of the fear that society will think less of him.

30. Emerging themes: need, insecurity, abuse, secrecy, good and bad, cowardice, and guilt • The themes of need, insecurity, abuse, secrecy, good and bad, cowardice, and guilt show up in Pip's interactions with Joe. Pip loves Joe very much, mostly because Joe lets him love him. Joe is about the only good thing in Pip's life, and at the age of seven, Pip cannot afford to lose the love of the only gentle adult around him. Therefore Pip says nothing about the food and the file he stole. Pip suffers a lot of guilt, but he prefers secrecy, emotional distance, and sacrificing the truth to losing love. Pip, the older narrator, judged himself by admitting he was a coward. These themes recur throughout the book.

31. Part I: Chapter 7 • Mrs. Joe is a very hard-hearted sister. As Pip is not old enough to be apprenticed in the forge yet, Mrs. Joe has decreed that he is not to be "pompeyed" (pampered), she sends him to do odd jobs and keeps whatever he earns. • Pip as a narrator describes a little of his education with Mr. wopsle’s great aunt. She was a "ridiculous old lady" who had started a small school in her cottage. The education, as Pip describes it, is less than satisfactory, but Pip does learn some basics from Biddy who is an orphan girl and who works for Mrs. Wopsle. • While doing his homework one night, Pip discovers that Joe is illiterate. • Joe tells the story of his life. • He explains that he never stayed in school long because his father, a drunk and physically abusive to him and his mother, kept him out. • He finishes the story by telling Pip how lonely he was after his parents died and how happy he was to have Pip's sister join him at the forge. Pip is skeptical, but Joe is firm on this, and Pip is overwhelmed with gratitude to Joe for taking him in as a baby.

32. Joe goes on to explain to Pip that, because of his father, Joe stays humble to Mrs. Joe. "I'm dead afeerd of going wrong in the way of not doing what's right by a woman," he says. He let's Mrs. Joe "Ram-page" over him because he sees how difficult it is to be a woman, remembering his mother, and he wants to do the right thing as a man. Pip has new understanding and respect for Joe. • At this point Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook return from a shopping trip with good news — Pip is to be sent to Miss Havishm’s to play with her daughter. Miss Havisham is "a rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house." • Uncle Pumblechook suggested Pip to Miss Havisham when she asked if he knew any small boys. Pip was to go tomorrow and spend the evening at Uncle Pumblechook's in town.

33. Points to Ponder: A Critical Analysis • Chapter Seven marks a key turning point in the novel. The second phase of Pip’s learning starts. • This phase takes Pip form his young childhood in the humble company of Joe to the beginnings of greater expectations in the company of higher society. • The chapter presents a relationship between Joe and Pip which is growing in love and respect. Theme of Class Distinction: • Joe is at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and, particularly, at the bottom of his household's hierarchy but Pip finds new respect for his position. "I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart." The image is almost ideal: the young Pip and Joe sitting next to the fire, Pip admiring him and teaching him the alphabet. Dickens art as a writer: • Dickens contrasts this humble setting with the opportunity presented at the end of the chapter by the noisy entrance and rather insolent announcement by Mrs. Joe. She introduces the first of Pip's "great expectations" in the form of the job given to Pip "to play" for Miss Havisham: "...this boy's fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham's." Although little is known about the wealthy woman, and less is known exactly how Pip is supposed to "play," the opportunity is one where Pip will be in the company of a higher social and economic class of people.

34. Summary of the session • Moved through the text of chapters (1-7) of part 1 • Explored themes • Discussed the development of characters • Critically analyzed the text • Discussed several important points

35. References of works consulted • CHARLES DICKEN’S GREAT EXPECTATIONS. (2007) Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom. Viva Books Private Limited: New Delhi • DICKENS: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS (1967). Edited by Martin Price. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs. New Jersey • http://www.cliffsnotes.com • www.gradesaver.com • www.enotes.com • www.bartleby.com • www.gutenberg.org • http://www.helium.com • http://www.studymode.com • http://thebestnotes.com

36. Thank you very much!