Great Expectations Group

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gravog
Student
High School - 9th Grade

In Chapter 31 of "Great Expectations", in what ways does Dickens employ satiric humor?

thanks in advance :)

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Posted by gravog on Friday August 22, 2008 at 4:02 PM and tagged with chapter 31, great expectations, herbert, humor, mr wopsle, pip, satiric, style.

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  1. lit24
    lit24 Teacher
    Doctorate

    eNotes Editor

     In his letter to his friend and biographer Forster,  Dickens states that when he first   began writing "Great Expectations,"  "it was the grotesque tragi-comic conception that first encouraged me." The incident in Ch.31, an obvious example of literary satire,  in which Pip and Herbert witness Wopsle's pathetic and ludicrous presentation of Shakespeare's greatest tragedy has to be studied with Dickens' tragi-comic concept in mind.

     At the end of Ch. 30 Wopsle is mockingly referred to as "the celebrated provincial amateur of Roscian renown."  The roman Quintus Roscius Gallus (126-62 BC) was a famous and talented  comic actor. This prepares us for the farcical situation of  the next chapter: a comic actor playing the role of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragic heroes.

    Nevertheless, Wopsle unlike  the talented Roscius has grand plans of "reviving the Drama" (Ch.31).  Needless to say he does not succeed, as Dickens remarks sarcastically in Ch.47: "Mr.Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary,had partaken of its decline." Wopsle is thus a pathetic tragi-comic character who imagines that he is a highly talented actor while in reality he is not.

    Such a person cannot hope to do any justice to Hamlet's role, and Wopsle's absurd presentation soon ends as farce with Dickens saying,"I laughed ... the whole thing was so droll."  

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    Posted by lit24 on Friday August 22, 2008 at 6:26 PM