Dickens gets right to the action. Within the first few paragraphs, he has introduced the main character, Pip, conveyed that the story is being told in first person by Pip when he is older, given the location of the story, revealed that Pip is an orphan with five dead brothers, and introduced the conflict: a convict in need of help. The choice of the retrospective first-person narrator is effective because the reader immediately feels part of an intimate and confessional conversation.
Description is one of Dickens’ strengths and weaknesses, as seen in the quote describing the convict: “ . . . a man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.” It is rich with detail, creating a crisp vision of the man, and it is overloaded with detail, making the reader wonder if Dickens will ever stop. Yet there is no question he has a gift for bringing the reader right into the place, in this case “ . . . a bleak place overgrown with nettles . . . dark flat wilderness . . . intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it.”
