Explication Charles Dickens Great Expectations PDF

Preview

Summary

Download Explication Charles Dickens Great Expectations PDF

Description

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861. -semi biographical ; strange atmosphere. I/ It takes place in a churchyard/ in dusk/ during Christmas Eve/ at night early. Ironical because it begins in a place where lives end. Pip is alone in the yard. The setting creates an atmosphere of sadness, gloom, obscurity. He realises that he is alone: his parents are dead/ and his brothers too (line 9). He is orphan: social outcast. 3rd paragraph: horizontal lines: no bright future, not promising. II/ Pip encounters a fearful man. III/ 2 characters: Pip and The Man “a man”; “the man”; “fearful man”. Pip will involve, change because he is the character. Tenses: present and preterit → he is going to grow up, not a flat character. The man is described with the passive tense, he is a victim of men, elements and nature. But also, a dreadful one. He will involve and have an important role. Both of them are outcast and alone. Pip described himself as “small bundle of shivers”: pippin, new born birds, unsteady in life, weak/ helpless. The convict: fearful because he looks like no one else. He is not part from the society again (not dressing like the others): violent, victim of nature/ elements/ laws/ society, dreadful, Name Abel Magwitch (the victim with A in the Bible). All verbs used for him highlight the fact that it’s not voluntary. Reduced to the state of an animal → ironical when he tells Pip “you young dog”. Depicted as an ogre. Pip is desperate just as many young adults. IV/ 1) Pip alone / 2) Pip and the man / 3) Pip being the narrator of the man leaving → alone again. 1) He’s realizing that he’s a poor orphan with no past and no future. 2) Someone comes, Pip is upset after questioning his identity, hid landmarks have been blurred, he lost his bearing. Physically he’s overturned but the man makes him alive again just as a midwife. The man assumes that role → turning point in Pip’s life and 2nd movement. 3) Alone again. Horizontal black lines → as if he was in prison/ doomed in dark future. V/ The 1st person narration: Pip Pip at the beginning: little boy / at the end: adult narrator who tells the story. He makes an analepsis → he looks back at what he is done with tenderness. “Childish” → adult narrator/ “humour” → gap between the young Pip and adult Pip. Intervention au present → narrateur adulte qui sait les traumatismes de l’enfant. Recurrence of: emotional epithets, empathic forms, repetition. There’s pity, pathetic tones: adult narrator telling the reader this is what happened in a child head. The text is more humorous (thanks to the gap) than sad or gothic. VI. The atmosphere, characters, story… We are introduced to the gothic theme, the pathetic, the ironical twist.

1st chapter of a bildungsroman (roman de formation; d’apprentissage): Pip was gifted with imagination → fanciful child. He evolves through the novel. This incipit shows the evolution of the child →→→ adult. He arises the gap....