In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens the language that is used conveys that your past doesn’t define who you are when you take initiative. The convict a character in Great Expectations is the main example of how if you take initiative then you can change your future and your past won’t define you. In the beginning of the novel he is a part of the lowest social class and was described 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 …show more content…
Dickens also uses the phrases such as a man who has been soaked in water, smothered in mud, lamed by stones, cut by flints, stung by nettles, and torn by briars to emphasize that he is a convict and that he is a part of the lowest class which could be classified as the class of criminals. Dickens uses the convict as the name of the character through to most of the novel and it isn’t until volume 3 that Dickens gives the convict a name. This could symbolize that the as a convict you were the lowest of lows and that would follow you throughout the rest of your life unless you decide to take initiative to change your life. He decides to take initiative after Pip a young boy and the main character of Great Expectations gives him food and helps him. After his encounter with Pip he decides that he wants to work hard for a living so that Pip doesn’t have to work hard. As the convict is banished because of the crime he had done. In the new world he worked as “a sheep farmer, stock breeder, and other trades”(317). Once Pip finds out that the convict made him a gentleman , Charles Dickens reveals to us his name which is Magwitch but for the purposes of him not getting into trouble because he