Style

Some of the narrative devices that Dickens uses are caricature, comic speech mannerisms, intrigue, Gothic atmosphere, and a central character who gradually changes. Earl Davis notes the close network of the structure and balance of contrasts, and praises the first-person narration for providing a simplicity that is appropriate for the story while avoiding melodrama. Davis sees the symbolism attached to "great expectations" as reinforcing the novel's impact.[108]

Characterisation

Character leitmotiv

Mr Wopsle as Hamlet, by Harry Furniss

Characters then become themes in themselves, almost a Wagnerian leitmotiv, whose attitudes are repeated at each of their appearances as a musical phrase signaling their entry.[109] For example, Jaggers constantly chews the same fingernail and washes his hands with scented soap, Orlick lurches his huge body, and Matthew Pocket always pulls at his hair. Seen by the narrator, their attitude is mechanical, like that of an automaton: in the general scheme, the gesture betrays the uneasiness of the unaccomplished or exasperated man, his betrayed hope, his unsatisfied life.[109] In this set, every character is orbited by "satellite" characters. Wemmick is Jaggers's copy at work, but has placed in Walworth a secret garden, a castle with a family of an elderly father and a middle-aged fiancée, where he happily devours buttered bread.[110] Wopsle plays the role of a poor Pip, kind of unsuccessful, but with his distraction, finally plays Hamlet in London, and Pumblechook does not hesitate to be the instrument of Pip's fortunes, then the mentor of his resurrection.[111]

Narrative technique

For Pip's redemption to be credible, Trotter writes, the words of the main character must sound right.[112] Christopher Ricks adds that Pip's frankness induces empathy, dramatics are avoided,[113] and his good actions are more eloquent than words. Dickens's subtle narrative technique is also shown when he has Pip confess that he arranged Herbert's partnership with Clarriker, has Miss Havisham finally see the true character of her cousin Matthew Pocket, and has Pocket refuse the money she offers him.[114] To this end, the narrative method subtly changes until, during the perilous journey down the Thames to remove Magwitch in chapter 54, the narrative point-of-view shifts from first person to the omniscient point of view. For the first time, Ricks writes, the "I" ceases to be Pip's thoughts and switches to the other characters, the focus, at once, turns outward, and this is mirrored in the imagery of the black waters tormented waves and eddies, which heaves with an anguish that encompasses the entire universe, the passengers, the docks, the river, the night.[114]

Romantic and symbolic realism

According to Paul Davis, while more realistic than its autobiographical predecessor written when novels like George Eliot's Adam Bede were in vogue, Great Expectations is in many ways a poetic work built around recurring symbolic images: the desolation of the marshes; the twilight; the chains of the house, the past, the painful memory; the fire; the hands that manipulate and control; the distant stars of desire; the river connecting past, present and future.[115]

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