The narrative position is a valuable tool in the portraiture of a realist novel. Although there is no concrete definition of pragmatism we refer to Great Expectations as a authoritative realist novel as there are certain literary techniques employed that promote the reader to believe in the narrative.
Great Expectations is an autobiographical fiction and Pip is the narrator-hero who tells his narrative in first individual position. It is really of import that Dickens has chosen Pip to narrate his ain narrative as it enables readers to experience closer to Pip. Pip is able to confide in the reader his interior ideas and emotions through remembrances of the yesteryear, ideas that are cardinal to the apprehension of Pip and the secret plan.
The narrative begins with Pip presenting himself or possibly presenting his first individuality crisis ; ‘I called myself Pip ‘ . A nucleus characteristic of a realist novel is the focal point on instruction and moral development of the chief character, besides known as a bildungsroman. Whilst we witness Pip ‘s luck from orphan to gentleman we understand his true growing comes in emotional adulthood when he comes to footings with his shame sing societal position and learns what it truly means to be a ‘gentle adult male ‘ .
What is interesting about the narrative is that as Pip recalls the memories of his childhood, the experiences are presented by the kid Pip and subtly interchanged with the review of the grownup storyteller. The reader may non be ab initio cognizant of this double focussed narrative, of the naif kid Pip and the retrospective grownup Pip, as Dickens skillfully manipulates the tense doing past events experience fresh and present. From remembering the scene of a scene we move directly into a memory of an event. In Chapter 2 Pip describes Joe ‘s forge as being attached to their wooden house as most state homes were ‘at that clip ‘ so instantly displacements to stating of events, where he switches between past and present participials. ‘I raised the latch… . peeped in at… [ Joe ] sitting in the chimney corner ‘ .
One convention of pragmatism is to put the narrative in the existent universe. Dickens sets the novel in locations he is familiar with such as the fens and God’s acre in Kent where he lived as a kid and London where he moves to with his parents. By utilizing the names of topographic points the reader already knows to be true they are given the sense of a more factual history and a more credible universe. Dickens is besides able to include great item of an bing topographic point, fostering our belief in the narrative particularly if the reader is familiar with the topographic point.
It is believed that the prodigious ‘Satis House ‘ was based on ‘Gad ‘s Hill ‘ , a sign of the zodiac near Rochester that Dickens had admired as a kid and subsequently became the proprietor of four old ages before composing Great Expectations. Renaming the house may hold symbolic and dry mention as we learn from Estella that Satis means ‘enough ‘ and that ‘whoever had this house, could desire nil else. ‘ ( Chapter VIII ) For on Pip ‘s important first visit to the estate to run into Miss Havisham and her adoptive girl, Estella, he learns that he himself is non adequate and his compulsion with going a gentleman begins. It is frequently when Pip visits Satis House, Pip ‘s brushs and experience become less existent. The narrative becomes rather hallucinatory ( at one point Pip fancies he sees Miss Havisham hanging from a beam by the cervix ) and plays within the kingdom of Gothic phantasy with sinister detailing of a lady within a room where clip has stopped and yet nil is preserved, Miss Havisham and the contents of the room continue to age and wither.
In Satis House really small pragmatism is used. The bedraggled estate reflects Miss Havisham in her decaying province ; the dressing room reflects her morbid compulsion with losing her love on the twenty-four hours she was to be wed, evidenced by the icky nuptials bar, stopped redstem storksbills, the blocked-out daytime. Her anguished psyche is crudely open and we are invited to look on with horror-stricken captivation. Estella besides has symbolic mention. Pip describes that Estella ‘s ‘light came… like a star ‘ . Estella, though cold and distant, is the visible radiation that shines in this dark house. Her young person and beauty contrast to the ‘wax-work and skeleton ‘ Miss Havisham.
About all of Pip ‘s experiences in Satis House are Gothic and phantasmagoric. As readers we may accept that it is the kid Pip ‘s fright and bullying making an hyperbole, as we see in the beginning of the novel when he meets the at large inmate, Magwitch. The item provided about Magwitch, such as a adult male who ‘limped, and shivered, and glared and growled ‘ , is about excessively much for us to accept this individual as a credible character. But if we can conceive of that every little item is being emphasised by the kid ‘s panic, this besides helps us to derive a better penetration into how scared the immature Pip was. Possibly there is greater truth in sensationalising to stand for ideas and emotions than a factual history which would hold less impact on the foreigner.
Other exaggerated scenes besides seem to reflect Pip in a heightened emotional province. One peculiar scene, when Joe visits Pip in London ( Chapter 27 ) , highlights the extent of Pip ‘s snobbism and the tormenting embarrassment of Joe trailing his chapeau around the room of which Pip gives a really elaborate and drawn out history. There is the esthesis of watching in slow-motion and Pip ‘s restlessness for it to be over.
A common literary device in Dickens ‘s authorship is the usage of repeat. This rhetoric guides the reader to believe and experience a certain manner and brings focal point to a item that demands consideration. With Pip ‘s sister we are frequently reminded she has brought him up ‘by manus ‘ but are forced to reflect on the sarcasm and her true deficiency of compassion in this bend of phrase.
For all the symbolism there is a great sum of descriptive item which Roland Barthes ( 1967 ) considers to be ‘superfluous ‘ and ‘futile ‘ parts of the ‘reality consequence ‘ . Techniques and descriptions used to make an semblance of world may non ever be finally representative of the truth. Dickens adapted world to a more credible presentation in the instance of the five headstones of Pip ‘s household which were based on the 13 headstones in the Kent God’s acre of Dickens ‘s childhood.
Dickens besides rewrote the concluding chapter and so the published stoping was non as Dickens had intended but one that creates better closing and possibly a more acceptable world.
Allen and Walder wrote that ‘Dickens sought to show truth through non-realist, romantic or symbolist schemes of presentation ‘ ( The Realist Novel, p. 192 ) and Dickens himself wrote, in a foreword to Martin Chuzzlewit, that ‘what is hyperbole to one category of heads and perceptual experiences, is apparent truth to another ‘ ( as quoted in The Realist Novel, p. 146 ) .
If we are to see childhood memories it is about impossible to remember them in rigorous world. They become deformed with clip and are remembered more through an emotional province than a factual recording. Things become overdone when we recollect the significance of their occurrence. In this sense, possibly Pip ‘s portraiture of epic characters is more faithful to the world of the memory.
George Levine suggests that novels represent a ‘liberal position of world ‘ ( The Realist Novel. P. 98 ) The thought is that so much frontage is used in trying to make a world it certainly can non be called existent any longer. Levine writes ‘in necessitating the proof of imaginativeness in the seeable universe… pragmatism posits a tenseness between imaginativeness ( with the module of ground, as good ) and world ‘ . ( p243 ) It can be misdirecting to presume pragmatism infers a entire world or a true word picture of ‘real life ‘ though possibly we can believe it to be the writer ‘s world.
In decision, Great Expectations is really melodramatic but uses a mix of realist and non-realist techniques and conventions. Parentless Pip, in a sort of perverse phantasy and fairy tale, finds himself moulded by two people who take great involvement in his life, the insane inheritress Miss Havisham who is emotionally responsible for Pip desiring to go a gentleman and the condemnable ‘second male parent ‘ Magwitch who is financially responsible for Pip going one.
What causes us to believe in the happenstances of the secret plan and the extremes of character is that we as readers have allowed ourselves or been convinced through literary devices to believe in Pip ‘s world. The realist consequence entreaties to what a reader is more likely to believe in whilst more non-realist techniques may really stand for a greater truth to the storyteller ‘s experience. Some readers may happen the secret plan excessively contrived, the characters excessively much like imitations, it is the storyteller we need to swear and believe in if we are to believe in the whole narrative.
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