Example research essay topic: The Significance Of Prison Images In Great Expectations - 1,850 words

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The Significance of Prison Images in Great Expectations Crime, punishment, guilt and innocence are issues very well explored in Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations. The images of prisons, very vivid description of jail atmosphere and constant feeling of guilt prevalent in the books main character, Pip, makes us pay especial attention to this subject. It is clear that it doesnt emerge in the novel on its own, but comes from a real life experience of the author. This book is partly autobiographic and it will be interesting to find out how Charles Dickens came to know so profoundly the realities of life of convicts, how he utilized this knowledge in Great Expectations and what is the importance of prison imagery and its contribution to the story.

John, father of Charles Dickens, made very little money being a clerk in Navy Pay Office of England. Insufficient income, together with severe expenditures, eventually landed him in debt. So, consequently, he was forced to go to debtors prison. It was the custom of the time that John had to take his family with him. In 1824 young Dickens was just 12 years old (R. Coles.

Charles Dickens and the Law, 1983, p. 564). In order to help his father to get out of debt, Charles was forced to work in a blacking factory, doing the job that implied horrible conditions (Ph. Collins. Dickens and Crime, 1962, p. 15). As Edmund Spenser, quoted in Phillip Collins Dickens and Crime, says, these events lie behind the loneliness, disgrace, and outlawry which pervade all his novels (p. 15). Collins writes: It is a commonplace that his sympathy for suffering and neglected children, which lies at the root of his educational concern, drew much of its strength from the traumatic experience of his own childhood the period, about his 12 th year when the family was in financial straits, his father in the Marshalsea Prison, and he was left alone in the world, working at the hated blacking-warehouse. (Ph.

Collins. Dickens and Crime, 1962, p. 13) There is little doubt that horrible experiences Dickens faced in his childhood would leave their imprint on all of his writing. However, apart from prison life and poverty, Dickens was very well aware of the reverse side of legal coin, which he came to know during his legal training. He began doing it when he was 15; he studied law in the office of a solicitor serving as attorneys apprentice (R.

Coles. Charles Dickens and the Law, 1983, p. 565). It didnt take much time, however, for him to find out that his duties were boring: I didnt much like it, it was a very little world, and a very dull one, recollects the author (R. Coles. Charles Dickens and the Law, 1983, p. 565; Ph.

Collins. Dickens and Crime, 1962, p. 174). Even though Dickens knowledge of the law was never at all professional, he managed to make his brief experience of the law stretch a long way (Ph. Collins. Dickens and Crime, 1962, pp. 175 - 76).

All these experiences find their way into the novel, when Dickens very convincingly describes both convicts and lawyers in Great Expectations. It is clear that there exists a relationship between crime and the characters of the novel. The author employs this connection to show that it is possible to reform a criminal. Dickens also shows that people can create prisons for themselves. In the article The Effects of Crime in Great Expectations, Deirdre Blanchfield notes that Pip is born into his prison.

He always comes to associating himself with criminal behavior and criminals. (D. Blanchfield. The Effects of Crime in Great Expectations, 1999) Pip refers himself to criminal world from the beginning: I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender whom as Accoucheur Policeman had taken up... and delivered over to her to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law (Ch. Dickens.

Great Expectations, 2002, p. 38). He thinks his home can be compared easily with prison or a cage and Mrs. Joe thus undergoes a shift from being not a sister but a jailer. Pip makes it a point to prepare himself to go to jail even after any insignificant occasion or event. When Pip has filled brandy with tar and that brandy makes Pumblechook choke, he thinks, I had no doubt murdered him somehow (Ch. Dickens.

Great Expectations, 2002, p. 48). If to take a closer look, it can be seen that in Pips home there are more prisoners than just him. His sister, Mrs. Joe is a warden for Pip but she herself is also imprisoned. She doesnt have any choice except to take her brother to her house after their parents die. However, Mrs.

Joe wouldnt give him away for any thing as she cares too much about appearances. Its clearly stated in the book that Pip to her is just like another item of property. He certainly is considered a burden but a burden that helps her to show off her own self-value. Mrs.

Joe acts like a warden toward Pip. His imprisonment continues and he never can even think or act on his own. But that is only until Pip meets Magwitch who makes Pip to disobey the only person of authority he has known so far: his sister. From the very beginning to the very end Pip is connected to Magwitch. Magwitch is a real criminal who is convicted and wanted by the police. He is perceived as a victim, the victim of neglect, poverty and repression, driven by hunger to crime, forsaken from childhood, and ever since relentlessly persecuted and prosecuted (D.

Blanchfield. The Effects of Crime in Great Expectations, 1999). Pip cannot understand this and Magwitch for him is a convict in any case. Even later on, when trying to help him, he still sees him as a prisoner: The more I dressed him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like the slouching fugitive on the marshes... I believe too that he dragged one of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man (Ch.

Dickens. Great Expectations, 2002, p. 315) Dickens utilizes this characterization in order to show that redemption is possible no matter what the outcome looks like. (D. Blanchfield. The Effects of Crime in Great Expectations, 1999) Pip starts destroying his own imprisonment after his meeting with Magwitch. It is he who makes Pip forever connected to crime. Pip understands this connection when he goes to see Newgate Prison with Wemmick: I consumed the whole time in thinking how strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening I should have first encountered it; that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain that was faded but not gone; that, it should in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement. (Ch.

Dickens. Great Expectations, 2002, p. 253) The taint never disappears. Much of Pips life is related to crime and, as a consequence, to prison also, a lot of it due to the convict who found in himself enough emotion and gratitude to feel for a boy who agreed to give him some food. Magwitch goes to Australia especially to earn money to take care of Pips great expectations; and Dickens tries his best to show that he has reformed.

Dickens uses the imprisonment issue throughout the text, in some cases as a threat and others as fate. (D. Blanchfield. The Effects of Crime in Great Expectations, 1999) So, there are two points of significance in Dickens use of prison images all throughout the novel. In one sense, the importance of prison imagery in the novel can be explained as an attempt of Dickens to show how people can create prisons themselves, for themselves. How readily they can agree to conditions similar to those in jail, even when they have a choice to do otherwise.

Here is Pip, who is always feeling insecure and who cant see the world clearly having built around himself bars of unnecessary, undeserved guilt. Here is his sister, who finds respectability and some joy, acting like a warden, having thus created the atmosphere of jail in her own house. Here is also Estelle, who voluntarily agreed to be imprisoned in Satis House by Miss Havisham. On the other hand, symbols of crime and punishment, like convicts, prisons and police can also signify the internal fight in Pip and finally change in his perception of some social issues. After all, the transition in his attitude to Magwitch is very noticeable. If in his childhood he was mortally afraid of police and accepted their authority without doubt, then growing older, he comes to understand that sometimes law provides external standards without taking inner qualities of the person into consideration and so Pip decides to help his convict and does this passionately and with all means he can provide.

So in this case, prison images and convict and lawyer characters in the novel can serve as a reminder that just as society supplies some set of external values irrespective of a persons inner self, so the law may also provide some standards without considering a persons morality or inner feelings. In Charles Dickens and the Law, Robert Coles supports this point of view when he writes about experiences in Dickens life: No acclaim, no amount of achieved influence seemed enough to prevent him from going back, time and again to the memories generated by an earlier life: the child in a debtors prison, the youth struggling with a harsh and mean life, the young man observing lawmakers at their shall-shilling or corrupt worse, and, above all, the apprentice writer taking note of lawyers who, of course, are right there when men and women go to prison, or lose whatever rights or privileges they may have had, or find themselves in severe straits because the laws work this way rather than that way or on behalf of these people rather than those. (R. Coles. Charles Dickens and the Law, 1983, p. 566) Its important to see behind the appearance, look into the persons character rather than his conditions or position in the society. Even a convict can be a nice man after all, and there can be innocent people even in prison.

There is something good in every one of us and to see that is to understand the reality of life. Maybe, that was the message that Dickens wanted to convey by making the prison image implicitly predominant throughout the novel. Reference list: D. Blanchfield. The Effects of Crime in Great Expectations. Retrieved April 24, 2005 from web R.

Coles. Charles Dickens and the Law. Virginia Quarterly Review 59 (1983) Ph. Collins. Dickens and Crime. New York: St.

Martin's, 1962. Ch. Dickens. Great Expectations. Rupa Classics, 2002

Research essay sample on The Significance Of Prison Images In Great Expectations