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Showing convincingly how characters develop and also achieve a sense of identity is an essential way in which novelists and poets engage fully with their readers.
Identity is exclusively explored throughout the entirety of
‘Great Expectations’. Dickens uses intelligent devices ensure that the
development evokes the strongest of emotions from the reader. The most
effective of these is the contrast Dickens creates between flat and round
characters. However it must be questioned whether the development of identity
is the only and most essential element in engaging the reader. Description and
the use of setting are important for a more immediate response however, iteration
of characters often creates a comical effect.
The use of setting and description can be said to outweigh
the importance in development in order to engage with the reader. Dickens uses
a series of image clusters to engage with the reader, which can be seen to be
more obvious and therefore more important than slow development. These Image clusters
often contain symbolic resonances and are particularly evident in opening
chapters of the novel. The events on the marsh show a clear mirror to the eerie
atmosphere of Satis House. Perhaps the most relevant and inconspicuous of these
links is the evident metaphor for death and decay. The marshes are described as
a “bleak place overgrown with nettles” creates the setting of a place with no
guidelines, a place that has been free to go to ruin. The fact that the opening
paragraph occurs in a churchyard, specifically a graveyard clearly evokes the
connotations of death. This clearly mirrors Satis House and Miss Havisham as,
not only is Miss Havisham “corpse-like” and “a skeleton in the ashes of a rich
dress”, but while wandering the garden Pip notes that he mistakes a hop plant
for “”a figure hanging there by the neck” and is convinced “that the face was
Miss Havisham’s”. Even Satis House in all its grandeur slowing echoes the hulks
as the cold wind blows here too. The mirroring here has some very clear and
very strong effects on the reader that the exploration into identity simply
couldn’t. This creates a sense of foreboding and a clear sense of fate due to
the immediacy of the reaction to the imagery and descriptive devices used by
Dickens outweigh that in character development as it creates a sense of
hopelessness in the topic. The fact that the marshes and Satis House haunts Pip
even in London creates the sense of the futility of escape and this suggests a
lack of developmental possibilities. This therefore suggest the showing
convincingly how characters develop and also achieve a sense of identity isn’t
essential in engaging with Dickens’ readers as the description creates a more
emotional response and excites the reader. As ‘Great Expectations’ was first
written in serial form it would have
been important for Dickens to engage with the reader in every issue. If
development alone was used, readers are likely to have become dissatisfied due
to its length and the novel wouldn’t have been the success it was.
Character interaction
is used extensively by Dickens to communicate key themes and creates drama. Dickens
uses dialect to create divides and barriers in the interaction of the
characters and evokes stronger feelings within the reader. A key example is
this is the convict’s dialect in the opening chapters of ‘Great Expectations’. When
Pip first encounters the convict the fear in this encounter is evident through
the violence in the speech : “Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your
throat!”. Despite this, there is a beautiful comic element in Dickens writing
as he conveys the convict as illiterate, emphasising the significant class gap
between the readers and this characters which would have amused them and
motivated them to continue reading. This can be shown in the inaccuracy in his
speech such as “pint out the place… give it mouth!” Magwitch never truly
develops, even when he returns to meet Pip in London. This is highlighted again
through his dialect, for example “You was a-saying”. A stronger example of this is Miss Havisham.
Despite her interactions with other characters and the movement of the plot,
she is stuck in a permanent state of non-existence: she literally stop
developing at twenty to nine. The repetition in the lack of development in
character interaction creates the sense of a circular motion which reemphasises
the idea of fate and therefore the impossibility of development to secure a
clear identity. The individual elements of each of these ‘stunted’ characters
are what engages the reader more because they become interesting and compelling
than characters that go through a slow course of development.
However, it can be said that stunted character interaction
is vital for the development of other characters such as Pip and Estella so
that they can achieve a clear identity. A clear example of this is Miss
Havisham and Satis. Every time Pip visits Satis House he has developed and that
is extenuated and the stunted development of the house. This therefore suggests
that development is key to the novel as it suggests that the lack of character
interaction engages the reader to understand the development of Pip and their
clear-cut identity by the end.
Pip’s status change clearly highlights how the development
in character’s identity is essential to dickens’ in engaging with his readers.
The novelist, E.M. forster mad a famous distinction between ‘flat’ characters
who are immediately recognisable by their visual presentation and habits of
speech, and ‘round’ characters who are capable of development, and can surprise
us. Dickens uses flat characters such as Joe, Mrs Joe and Magwitch to make the
readers engage with the development of round characters such as Pip. This can
be highlight in Joe’s confession to Pip about why he is unschooled in that Mrs
Joe “would not be over partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise”.
The fact that Pip’s growth and development is measured in comparison to Joe’s
stationary position means the reader is more engaged with Pip. The status
change in Pip would have appealed to the reader as many would be of the newly
middle classes because during this time the industrial revolution was in full
swing. Therefore we can infer that the development in characters in pursuit in
identity is essential to the novel to engage readers because of the large
number of ‘flat’ characters, which makes those that can develop more appealing.
In conclusion, we can deduce that the development in
characters in pursuit of identity is not essential to engaging readers. This is
due to the immensity of over elements in the novel which engage the readers.
The most substation of these is the use of descriptions which evokes a greater
and quicker response from the reader. This is important, especially to Dickens’
career, as the novel was originally in a serial form. Therefore if Dickens was
to continue as a writer he would need to engage readers immediately.
Description would be a quicker method of doing this than relying solely on the
development of characters. However, that was not to say that the development of
identity in characters such as Pip isn’t engaging however, other elements are
used by Dickens to communicate these.
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