Chapter One
The first chapter is an introduction to the main character, Philip Pirrip, or as he used to call himself, only Pip. He never knew his parents, and the only likeness that he had about them, came from his imagination looking at their tombstones.
Pip had imagined his father as a "square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair" and his mother "freckled and sickly". In that hard days, Pip had five brothers who died as well. Now, they rest beside the tomb of their parents.
Pip lives with his sister in the marsh country in south-east England. One night, Pip was at the village churchyard when one man arrives. The young boy describes him as a "fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head"
This man seized and turned him upside down, searching for something in Pip's pockets, but the only thing that he had was a piece of bread. Inquired by the man about the purpose of his presence there, Pip says that he was only gazing his parent's graves and that he lives a mile from the church.
 |
| A photo of the Kent graveyard on which Dickens based his description. |
So, the man demands Pip to bring a file (knife) and a wittle(a mispronunciation for victuals or vittle - which means food) in the next day morning in order to let him alive.
Actually, he was an escape convicted man and the "iron leg" that Pip refers is some kind of a ball in a chain with a leg cuff.
Pip runs through the marshes heading his home and for a while stops to see if the man was still there, and he was, limping and looking at him. Pip was so frightened that he started to run again, but this time without stopping.
See you in Chapter two!
No comments:
Post a Comment