Tuesday, January 14, 2014

How does Charles Dickens use satire in Great Expectations?You don't have to use quotes but if you can that would be perfect!

The principal character whom Charles Dickens uses in his
novel Great Expectations as his vehicle for satire is Uncle
Pumblechook.  This character is a stereotype of the shallow class-obsessed and envious
man who is also a hypocrite and one who exploits others; he is comical in his pompous
fatuity. At the Christmas dinner on the forge, Pumblechook pompously makes the toast and
berates Pip until he learns that Pip may have "great expectations"; then he takes credit
for Pip's social advancement, bragging at the Boar's Nest later on that it was he who
was responsible for Pip's good fortune. 


Satirizing the
elevation of a frivolous upper class in the character of Miss Havisham, who is an
eccentric old woman that remains in the wedding dress of decades past and lives in a
dark, rotting mansion,  Dickens has Uncle Pumblechook speak of her as though she is a
queen, but she is without the values that even the poor possess.  When Pip is picked to
visit Satis House and play with Estella, Pumblechook, who previously has paid no
attention to Pip, now takes charge of his preparation to go to Miss Havisham's. 
However, his petty and ill-educated nature is apparent and satirized by Dickens in
Chapter VIII as Pip is subjected to Pumblechook's poor company.  He gives Pip little but
crumbs to eat and quizzes him on his arithmetic.  When they arrive at Miss Havisham's,
Pumblechook is rebuffed by Estella and not allowed through the gate as she tells him
Miss Havisham does not wish to see him.


In Chapter XXVIII,
Pip learns at the Boar's Nest that Uncle Pumblechook has taken credit for Pip's good
fortune,  Clearly, Dickens satirizes in this passage:


readability="18">

[Pip reads the newspaper]...the youth's earliest
patron, companion, and friend was a highly-respected individual not intirely unconnected
with the corn and seed trade...It is not wholly irrespective of our personal feelings
tht we record HIM as the Mentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our
town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes....


[Pip
remarks] I entertained a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in the days of
my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should have met somebody there...who would
have told me Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the founder of my
fortunes.



In addition to
satirizing the stereotypical Pumblechook and the upperclass with Miss Havisham, Dickens
pokes fun of a gruff and impolite Mr. Jaggers, a character who is a parody of a lawyer
whom the author knew in real life, a notoriously unscrupulous lawyer.  Satirizing
Jaggers abruptness, like an emotionally detached jailer who abruptly disposes of people,
Jaggers says, "there's an end of it" and waves clients away.  In one passage, Pip
narrates that Jaggers even "seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate
it." 

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