Great Expectations and Life as a fruit - Essay Example

23). The intense echo of this note is felt in Pip's relating to his own home and the surrounding marshes. However, even if the child sees the sky above the marshes as "just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed" (Dickens, 1993, p.7), the adult returns to the long-familiar landscape with brighter views and a lighter heart. The home which "had never been a very pleasant place" (Dickens, 1993, p. 109) comes to be reconsidered in the end, when happier circumstances turn its windows "gay with flowers" (Dickens, 1993, p. 473). The contrast between the thoughts of the unhappy child and those of the relieved young man is made possible by a shift from the foggy atmosphere of the marshes during wintertime to the sunny air of the same marshes during June.

The terrifying Hulks of a long gone cold season are forgotten to the advantage of more agreeable conditions. Once, the house set so close to the anchoring Hulks had occasioned nightmares to a small boy frightened not only by his sister's manner towards him, but also by an awful convict's threats. Now, the mists having risen and the boy no longer scared, the atmosphere is cheery as well. Therefore, places and people are strongly connected. . The childhood marshes and house merge and generate an overall feeling that everything is wrong and nothing good will turn out of it.

However, as the plot develops, Pip discovers that there is some kind of hope beyond the mists and the house. He 'escapes' into another despairing atmosphere, that of the Satis House. The gloomy exterior of the building, with "great many iron bars on it some of the windows walled up" (Dickens, 1993, p. 56), announces nothing constructive. The garden, "overgrown with tangled weeds" (Dickens, 1991, p. 65), causes more reason of concern. Everything here is out of date and creates the feeling that Pip has somehow entered a forbidden land.

The feeling becomes even more intense when Pip meets Miss Havisham. The dressing room, where everything is "in a state to crumble under a touch" (Dickens, 1993, p. 89), the yellow-white colour of the bride-gown, the rotten bride-cake and the decaying bride herself compose an image of disintegration in the happening. What would have been of this alive, yet decomposing woman, had her hopes been realized Two conclusions can be drawn from her behaviour: one, she is a very decided character, and two, she carries her decision to the extreme.

Nonetheless, even if everything in the Satis House is a "heap of decay" (Dickens, 1993, p. 89), the misery here is not equal to poverty. It is just the result of some rich woman's pain carried up to eccentricity. If the circumstances had been different, her will would have made her a popular, wealthy Victorian woman, most likely able and eager to manage the issues concerning the house, and to act as her husband's perfect companion at gatherings specific to their