Preston Tu

Jimenez

CP English 1 Honors

14 January 2020

Sense of Place

The novel, Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens takes place in a couple different

settings of England during the nineteenth century. These particular settings are the marshlands,

where Pip grew up, and London, the capital of the largest empire the world had ever known.

Dickens displays these two settings using tone as well as Pip’s expectations and identity as

shown in the end of the novel.

In the beginning of the novel the setting sets the tone as dismal. Pip says “Ours was the

marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first

most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a

memorable raw afternoon towards evening” (Dickens 1). Since Dickens uses “marsh country”

and “raw afternoon” it doesn’t give the impression that the tone is a happy day rather a gloomy

and dark day. Another quote that exemplifies the tone as dismal is “The marshes were just a long

black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another

horizontal line, not nearly so broad not yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red

lines and dense black lines intermixed” (Dickens 5).

Later on in the novel, Pip’s ambition and excitement goes unimpressed. When he arrives

at London, he sees it as “rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty” (Dickens 171). As Pip grows up

and goes back to the marsh country, although being very dismal, he describes it as “The June
weather was delicious. The sky was blue… I thought the countryside more beautiful and

peaceful by far than I had ever known it to be yet” (Dickens 508).

The two settings that Dickens uses displays the major factors of the tone, plot, and most

of all Pip’s character development. In the beginning, Pip sees the world as obvious as it is, but as

he grows up, he soon realizes that his expectations do not define his present and that he should

finally accept who he is.

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1942. Print.