Dickenss

How does dickens gain the readers interest in chapters 1 and 2 of great expectations?

In this assignment I will at how dickens gains the interest of the readers on chapters 1 and 2 of great expectations. He uses such things like the setting and humour to make these chapters interesting for the reader. He is also writing in 1st person which is very affective and help engage more with characters and the story.

The novel opens in the marsh country of England, land raw and wet, where young Pip stands alone in a churchyard before seven gravestones, under which are buried Pip's mother, father and five younger brothers. The sight of these stones starts Pip crying, and then, to make matters worse, out from between the graves hobbles a growling, mean and ragged looking man. He's got an iron shackle on one leg, but two good arms, which he uses to turn Pip upside-down, shaking loose a crust of bread from his pocket. The man sets Pip on a gravestone and wolfs down the bread, demanding to know where Pip is from and with whom he lives. Pip points to his village and explains that he lives with his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. After one more tip upside down, the shackled man demands that Pip meet him at the Battery tomorrow morning, with a file and some "whittles" (food). He warns Pip that he's not alone, that he has a henchman, a vicious young boy that's hiding among the stones, listening, who will be eager to tear Pip to pieces if he doesn't procure the whittles and file. That said, the old man hobbles off and Pip watches him head toward the river, a figure spooky enough to turn even the cow's heads. In this chapter we are introduced to 2 characters pip an orphaned boy raised by his domineering sister and her kind husband and the convict who seems to have escaped from prison as he seems edgy and nervous around pip as he asks were his parents are. Some techniques dickens uses to interest the reader in the first chapter would on cloud the use of humor as when the convict asks pip were his parent are and he points to the grave stones this creates a tragic sense of humor that interests the reader. He also uses the graveyard t create a sense of mystery. Some themes that are included in the first chapter include death and how people would have been classed in the society that pip and the convict would have den living in. in pips eyes the convict was looked upon as not being a gentleman because he did not have a hat this shows the different classes between the upper and lower classes the convict was obviously a lower class citizen. Death also plays a part in the first chapter as the opening scene is in a graveyard which tells us that there is a sense of mystery about the chapter.

In the second chapter we are introduced to 2 new characters Mrs. and Mr. Joe. Joe is Pip's sister's husband, a kind-hearted blacksmith who Pip greatly admires as a boy. And Mrs. Joe is Pip's sister, who raises Pip with a heavy hand and is a generally unpleasant woman. In the 2nd chapter pip talks about how he was has raised "by hand," that is, he's kept in line by a hand that never hesitates to whack him when he gets out of line. His sister Mrs. Joe is the primary hand-swinger. Twenty years his senior, not good-looking, and incredibly red-faced, Mrs. Joe keeps the house lively with her constant stomping and cleaning, made all the more frightening because she seems to resent having to raise Pip, being married to a blacksmith, and wearing an apron all day. Her husband Joe, on the other hand,