Dickens Essays

I have decided to read and review “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens. The book is set in the late 1800’s and is a story about an orphan growing up and his struggles throughout life. My first impression of this book was that it would be a typical Charles Dickens plot, …

This story has two main characters, the narrator and the signalman. The signalman lives in his hut by a rail tunnel, with a steep cutting above it. The narrator goes to visit the signalman every day, and there are many ways in which Charles Dickens creates a genuine atmosphere of …

From studying The Signalman by Charles Dickens and Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl, you can see noticeable differences between Pre-20th century and 20th century texts. Charles Dickens and Roald Dahl were both influential writers in their time; this is why I have chosen to study them. It’s interesting …

In “The Signalman” and “Night Fears” both the men experience some kind of fear. The reader has to distinguish whether the fear is supernatural or psychological. In both stories the signalman and night watchman work alone making them vulnerable and susceptible to the psychological fear. The central characters are isolated …

The Signalman written by Charles Dickens in 1866 and The Red Room written by H . G . Wells have many similarities. They both have “I” narration. The narrator in both stories do not believe in ghosts but near the end of the stories they each get a little frightened. …

Charles Dickens wrote “The Signalman” in the 1860s, at a time when ghost stories, the supernatural and the gothic were very popular with the Victorians. Many short stories during this period were written in this genre and this interest was probably inspired by the “Penny Dreadfuls” magazine, which contained many …

‘Great Expectations’ is a novel written by Charles Dickens. First published in weekly instalments for a magazine that was losing readers, called ‘All Year Round’, it was soon fully released in 1851 after the magazine gained more notability. The novel also seems to be semi auto-biographical, as Dickens own personal …

In this essay, I will define how, Charles Dickens builds tension in Chapters One and later on in Chapter thirty-nine of his, second -to-last complete novel, ‘Great Expectations’. Tension is defined as a feeling of anxiety or nervousness about something that is just about to happen. ‘Great Expectations’ is a …

In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, various techniques were employed to enhance the story. This essay will concentrate on Chapters 1, 3 8 and 11. I believe that these chapters’ best illustrated Dickens’s use of setting, characterisation and atmosphere. In chapters 1 and 3, Dickens described the setting …

Charles Dickens was a man who often used his writings as a tool to explain to the public his criticisms of the various facets of Victorian life. These criticisms included the penal and judiciary system, the maltreatment of children and the idea of the Victorian gentleman. The latter is the …