Illustration of Pip visiting a graveyard

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

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Chapter 1 Summary

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The reader is introduced to Pip, who says that his real name is Philip Pirrip. However, as that name is too long for him to pronounce, he calls himself Pip. He explains that he only knows his last name is Pirrip because his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, told him so. He also saw his father's name on his tombstone. Pip never knew his mother and father, who are buried together next to the graves of his five little brothers. He does not know anything about what they were like—he only knows his mother's name was Georgiana from seeing it on a tombstone.

Pip's earliest clear memory is from a day in which he visits his parent's graves. In the graveyard, which is in a marshy area near his house, a frightful man calls to him. The man has irons on his legs, rags on his head, and dirt all over his clothes—he is, Pip will learn, an escaped convict. He threatens Pip, and Pip begs the convict not to cut his throat. The convict asks Pip's name and where he lives, and he turns Pip upside down so that a piece of bread falls out of Pip's pockets. The convict eats the bread ravenously and asks Pip where his mother and father are. When Pip explains that they are dead, the convict asks who Pip lives with. Pip says he lives with his sister, the wife of the blacksmith.

The convict, who tilts Pip backward, asks Pip to bring "wittles" (meaning vittles, or food) and a file to the Battery the next morning. He warns Pip not to mention this to anyone, and he tells Pip that he is hiding with a young man who will come after Pip's heart and liver if Pip tells anyone about this incident. Pip says that he will bring the file and food the next morning.

As the convict limps away, Pip notices that he is holding himself together, and Pip imagines that the dead are almost pulling the man into the graves. The convict limps towards a gibbet, or gallows, where a pirate once was hanged. Pip imagines that the convict is the pirate come to life, and he runs home in terror.

Expert Q&A

Dickens' use of setting in chapter one of Great Expectations

In chapter one of Great Expectations, Dickens uses the setting to establish a mood of desolation and foreboding. He describes the marshes as "long and dismal," and the weather as "raw," reflecting the bleak and oppressive atmosphere that surrounds Pip and foreshadows the challenges he will face.

Can you provide examples of personification and pathetic fallacy from Chapter I of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens?

In Chapter I of Great Expectations, Charles Dickens uses personification and pathetic fallacy. Personification is evident when Pip notes his father's tombstone has "authority" and when the sea is described as a "distant savage lair." The mud "smothers" the convict, and flints "cut" him. Pathetic fallacy is suggested through the dreary, foggy marshes reflecting the convict's grim appearance and Pip's sense of helplessness, mirroring the rolling sea.

In Great Expectations, why was Pip uneasy at the end of Chapter 1?

Pip is uneasy at the end of Chapter 1 due to his encounter with a convict and seeing a gibbet, which is a structure used for hanging. This sight frightens Pip as it evokes the image of a pirate returning to life. His overactive imagination and sense of guilt amplify his fear, especially as he has been associating with a criminal and is outside when he shouldn't be. This foreshadows Pip's future involvement with the convict.

What does this sentence from chapter 1 mean, and how might a seven-year-old phrase it?

To five little stone lozenges...which...were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine—who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle—I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

The sentence reflects Pip's belief, based on the shape of his brothers' gravestones, that they lived their short lives lying on their backs with hands in their pockets, symbolizing passivity and early death. A seven-year-old might say: "My five brothers died when they were very small and never had to work. Their gravestones made me think they lived lying down with their hands in their pockets all the time."

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Chapters 2 and 3

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