Dickens Great Expectations Essay

We will do this by focussing on some short extracts, much as we did when we prepared for the IOP.

You will have a copy of this novel to read and use in class; as usual, we will use notebooks for class discussions and computers will not be essential.

However, if you click the image above, you will find the complete text of the novel online to read at any time.

His characters often also represent a certain type of person, and are sometimes very tightly linked to the themes he wants the reader to focus on.

Here is a basic introduction to some of the characters in ‘Great Expectations’ which you will build on in your notebooks through class discussions.

Here are some questions to answer that will hopefully clarify the main events and developments up to Chapter 22.

Great Expections Part One Review (groupwork) ♠♣♥♦ Character Dickens is famous for the vivid nature of his characters, their often odd names, and their appearance and ways of speaking.

♠♣♥♦ Background Research Context is all-important in this unit.

It is useful in helping us to understand the world of the books we read, and it is also a common focus in the Paper 2 questions you will face.

He possess a singularly wide, clear, and minute power of accurate observation, both of things and of persons; but his observation, keen and true to actualities as it independently is, is not a dominant faculty, and is opposed or controlled by the strong tendency of his disposition to pathetic or humorous idealization.

Perhaps in The Old Curiosity Shop these qualities are best seen in their struggle and divergence, and the result is a magnificent juxtaposition of romantic tenderness, melodramatic improbabilities, and broad farce.