Imagine being forced to be alone with the old reclusive and somewhat scary lady down the street. This is the situation that the Pip, the protagonist and narrator in Charles Dicken’s novel called Great Expectations, has to face. His sister forced him to go to see Miss Havisham, a mysterious lady from the upper class, and play with her at her house. In this passage Pip is seeing her for the first time. In this excerpt the lady is portrayed as a pure or even divine figure at first sight, but after more thorough observations from Pip she is described as a person in state of decay and far from divinity; which proves how unreliable the narrator is. All this meaning is made possible and emphasized by style.
Miss Havisham is described as a pure and …show more content…
This is due to the fact that Dickens chose a first person internal narrator. Again the narrator is Pip, who is still a young boy. It is only natural that a young boy does not know everything and that his perception of people or situations changes all the time. This passage displays his uncertainty perfectly. Before seeing the lady he was “half afraid” and reluctant, then she is perceived as a symbol of purity, and then as a grotesque lady in decay. This fact means that he gets the information at the same time as the reader, and it reinforces his uncertainty. So in this passage the author is trying to show us that the narrator is not reliable because he does not know everything, and what he knows is filtered so what he says could be quite subjective.
In conclusion, the different meanings attributed to Miss Havisham prove the uncertainty of the narrator. Are narrators really reliable? Well this passage is one of Dickens's ways to tell the reader that the narrator is not reliable in terms of facts because everything is seen through his eyes and filtered before it is said. This fact is one of the reasons why first person narrated writing is so
Miss Havisham is described as a pure and …show more content…
This is due to the fact that Dickens chose a first person internal narrator. Again the narrator is Pip, who is still a young boy. It is only natural that a young boy does not know everything and that his perception of people or situations changes all the time. This passage displays his uncertainty perfectly. Before seeing the lady he was “half afraid” and reluctant, then she is perceived as a symbol of purity, and then as a grotesque lady in decay. This fact means that he gets the information at the same time as the reader, and it reinforces his uncertainty. So in this passage the author is trying to show us that the narrator is not reliable because he does not know everything, and what he knows is filtered so what he says could be quite subjective.
In conclusion, the different meanings attributed to Miss Havisham prove the uncertainty of the narrator. Are narrators really reliable? Well this passage is one of Dickens's ways to tell the reader that the narrator is not reliable in terms of facts because everything is seen through his eyes and filtered before it is said. This fact is one of the reasons why first person narrated writing is so