英语毕业论文The-Analysis-of-Symbolic-Writing-in-Great-Expectations.doc

The Analysis of Symbolic Writing in Great Expectations
The Analysis of Symbolic Writing in Great Expectations

摘 要: 狄更斯是英国文学史上维多利亚时期著名的批判现实主义小说家之一；他的作品享誉世界，具有很高的研究价值。《远大前程》是他晚期被认为是较成熟的一部作品。细腻的描写，简明的语言使得小说通俗易懂；而各种写作手法的使用更加使得故事生动有趣，令读者回味无穷。象征手法是狄更斯惯用的写作手法；也正是因为象征手法的应用，他的文章往往含蓄委婉，给读者留下充分的想象空间。本文对狄更斯生平及部分作品和相关情况作了简单地分析，重点分析了象征手法在《远大前程》中的应用及它们在小说中的作用。
关键词: 狄更斯 《远大前程》 象征 手法 分析

Abstract: Charles Dickens is one of the most famous critical realist novelists in the English literature of Victorian Age; his works are well known all over the world, they are worth researching. Great Expectations was considered as the most mature of his later work. Delicate description and simple words made his novels attractive, easy to understand; and various writing style made the story even more interesting, made the readers linger on them. Dickens always uses symbols in his writing, and also because of the use of symbols his articles are always veiled and tactful, leave a space of imagination for the readers. I simply analyze Dickens’ life and some of his works in my essay, and mainly analyze the symbolic writing in Great Expectations and its usage in novels.
Key Words: Dickens Great Expectations symbolism methods analysis

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Abstract ………………………………………………………………
Key words …………………………………………………………………
I. Introduction……………………………………………………………..
II .Literature Review………………………………………………….…
III. Brief Introduction of the Writer……………………………….…..
3.1. The historical background and the writer’s life…………………………...
3.1.1 The historical background of Victorian Age ………………………..
3.1.2 Dickens’ life……………………………………………………………..
3.2. Dickens’ main works and his writing style………………………………..
3.2.1 Brief introduction of Dickens’ main works……………………………
3.2.2 Dickens’ writing style…………………………………………………...
IV. Analysis of Symbolic Writing………………………………………
4.1 Brief introduction of the novel……………………………………………...
4.2 Definition of symbol…………………………………………………………
4.3 Analysis of symbols in Great Expectations…………………………………
4.3.1 Symbols in Satis House………………………………………………….
4.3.2 Symbols outside Satis House……………………………………………
V. Summary……………………………………………………………….
Reference………………………………………………………………….

I. Introduction

Charles Dickens was one of the most famous critical realist novelists in the English literature of Victorian Age; he wrote lots of novels and they were very popular in the whole word. Many of his works were translated into different languages, and lots of readers were moved by the stories in his novels. He was considered as the greatest English realist of Victorian Age. In my essay, I’m going to write something about symbolic writing in Great Expectations. My thought is like this: First, I will introduce the writer Charles Dickens, the history background in his time, his life; his main work, and his writing style. In my opinion these are important, because these all influenced the novel. Second, give the definition of symbol, its usage in writing. Give the definition is very important, only when you know the definition can you know how it was used in a work and to analysis it. In the third part I will mainly analyze symbols in the novel Great Expectations, the writer’s purpose of these symbols and what roles they take part in the novel; this is the main body of my writing. In the last part I will summarize the whole writing. This is an outline of my essay.

II. Literature Review

Great Expectations is popular with people for years. At first, Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round had become extremely popular based on the success of works it had published in serial, such as his own work A Tale of Two Cities and Wilkie Collins’s The woman in white. But it had experienced a decline in popularity after publishing a dull serial by Charles Lever called A Day’s Ride. Dickens conceived of Great Expectations as a means of restoring his publication’s fortunes. The book is still immensely popular a century and a half later.
One of Great Expectations’ translators called Luo Zhiye (2000) wrote: Charles Dickens was one of his favorite writers; he had read almost most of his work, and had deep impression of him. He thought that because Great Expectations was Charles Dickens’ latter work, he had experienced a lot; for the surroundings and his life he had new and deeper understanding. So when writing this novel he put all these thoughts and experience in it, it is a mature work. Another translator Chang Zixia (2003) points out that from Great Expectations you can find Charles Dickens’ shadow of his early day’s life.
Zhang Boxiang (2005), the main writer of A Course book of English Literature points out that Dickens’ later works become heavily symbolic, not only providing the work a predominant atmosphere but also highlighting its central concern. So symbols are important in this novel, you can find a lot to write.

III. Brief introduction of the writer

3.1 The historical background and the writer’s life
People who have read lots of articles in different times and different countries may find that novels are usually different according to the historical background and culture difference. Generally speaking, a novel usually has some features of that history; and a writer’s work usually has some likeness of his own life to some extent. May be we can say a time’s work can show that time’s life and a writer’s works are always the writer his own life’s portrait. So I think it’s necessary to know the historical background and the writer’s life. Dickens lived in the Victorian age of England. The most important feature of that time was Industrial Revolution. In the novel there are many description of this.

3.1.1 The historical background of Victorian Age
The Victorian Age period covers the greater part of the nineteenth century. The early year of the Victorian Britain was a time of rapid development as well as serious social problems. Industrial Revolution had transformed the social landscape, enabling capitalists and manufacturers to amass huge fortunes. Steam-powered engines were exploited for railways and iron ships, for looms printing presses, and farmers’ combines; scientific discoveries and technologic inventions quickly brought amazing changes to the country. “For a time Britain was the ‘workshop of the world’; large amount of profit were accumulate both from expanding trade markets and from exploiting its huge-sized colonies.”(Zhang Boxiang 2005:147) Towards the mid-century, Britain had reached its highest point of development as a world power. Great Expectations was just based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England.

3.1.2 Dickens’ life
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 at Portsmouth; his life was full of hardships. When he was nine, his family moved to London, and his father was arrested and taken to prison for debt. His mother moved his seven brothers and sisters into prison with his father, but arranged for the young Charles to live alone outside the prison and work with other children pasting labels on bottles in a blacking warehouse. At that period he suffered a lot, the job was miserable; he thought himself too good for the job, and always earned the contempt of the other children. To this experience, also, may evidently be traced no smell part of the intense sympathy with the oppressed poor, especially with the helpless children, which is so prominent in his novels, like Pip in Great Expectations, Oliver in Oliver Twist, David in David Copperfield and so on. After his father was released from the prison, Dickens retuned to school. When he was fifteen, in order to earn his living, Charles worked as a clerk in a London lawyer’s office, where he observed all sorts and conditions of people with characteristic keenness. In Great Expectations, he described some characters that have something with law like: Jaggers and the clerk Wemmick, they are all vivid and realistic. There is no doubt that this is due to his experience of early time’s work. Later he became a Parliamentary reporter for newspapers. This experience enabled him to get acquainted with the inside of the British legal and political system, give him the chance to met people of all kinds, and prepared him both in art and stuff for his coming literary career. His literature career is hard but it is a successful one. After left lots of famous works for us, in 1870, he died of overwork

3.2 Dickens’ main works and his writing style
In Dickens’ short life he wrote a lot of novels, they are all popular with people. They are different stories, but they have some same features. For example: most of his novels use symbols; most of his main characters are little poor boys. Another example: David Copperfield and Great Expectations all have two main characters: one actor and one narrator. In the following paragraph, I will write them one by one.

3.2.1 Brief introduction of Dickens’ main works
Dickens was considered as the most popular and productive novelists in Victorian Age. During his life, he wrote a lot of novels which showed us a most vivid picture of the everyday life of the ordinary people of his time; people usually divided them into two parts: the early works (1836-1850) and the later works (1852-1870). Let’s just see some of them.
1) The Pickwick Paper (1836-1850)
Dickens was first famous by The Pickwick Paper. In this novel he attacks the ugly side of the political system of the time; however, it is still full of gaiety and happy laughter of a youth. Life is still pleasant and enjoyable though risky for the innocent or the inexperienced; the harm done is still retrievable. He was said as the most famous critical realist novelists of that time; however, it seems that the main purpose of this book is to entertain rather than criticize.
2) Oliver Twist (1837-1839)
This novel is based on real life material such as the current trial of a notorious fence and thief-trainer. By writing the most unfortunate experience of a poor orphan boy Oliver he means to give a vivid picture of the underworld with kinds of thieves, prostitutes, and murders as well as the horrible cruelty of the workhouse system of that time. “The novel, for the first time, also shows the author’s talent for the grotesque because of the excellent character portrayal of Fagin, Sykes and monks” (Zhang Boxiang 2005:197).
3) David Copperfield (1849-1850)
This novel is the last of the early group. People think this novel had some means that it is Dickens his own autobiographical of his childhood, retracing his own life. Because David, the main character of this novel also had the same life as him: humiliating labor in a blacking factory, apprenticeship to a law office, life as a journalist and eventually succeeded as a novelist, all like Dickens’s own life and they were vividly told in the novel. In this novel David’s early suffering is adequately compensated with a rich, happy marriage and a successful literary career, just like the author’s, and the world is still full of hope and sunshine. “According to Dickens himself, this novel is his ‘favorite child’; with readers too it is one of the most popular, and its critical reputation is very high” (Zhang Boxiang 2005:196).
These novels above are Dickens’ early works; now let’s have a look at his later works.
4) Hard Times (1854)
“This novel makes a fierce attack on the ‘perfect’ bourgeois system of education and bourgeois utilitarianism” (Guo Qongying 2001:197). The two main characters Tom and Louisa are children of a follower of the utilitarianism Manchester School. He brought his children on the philosophy of facts, carefully distinguishing any imaginativeness or youthful tendencies in them. However, at the end, his son Tom was caught and hustled out of the country because of commits theft; and his daughter also became a victim of his heartless principle. The unhappy state of his children opens the father’s eyes to the knowledge that life contains sentiments as powerful as facts. So this story is a little different from the above three, he wrote some other things about the society.
5) A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
This novel took the French Revolution as its background. Two cities are Paris and London in the time of that revolution. From this work we could see “Dickens shows his fury with the inhuman lawless aristocrats, with the injustice done to Dr. Manette” (Zhang Boxiang 2005:198). In my opinion this book is worth reading; I have read the plot of it. “The description of the Marquis brothers’ crime, the imprisonment of Dr. Manette, the heated atmosphere of the revolution embodied in Mrs. Defarge’s calm, resolute needling, and the part about Sydeny Carton”(Zhang Boxiang 2005:198), they are so wonderful! Dickens wrote the life of both in London and Paris, and the revolution of French in a story; he really did a very good job.
6) Great Expectations (1860-1861)
So this is the novel of his that I am most familiar with. In this story, Pip as the main character was only a poor boy without parents; he was brought up by his sister and her husband, a man with simple and good nature who is a blacksmith. Actually Pip was also a very good boy at the first; however, he was after he owned a secret benefactor, the man settled Pip “Great Expectations” for Pip, Pip had to go to London to get high education to be a gentleman. For the change of his life he is ashamed of his relationship with his old friends; however, in the end the man which he felt ashamed helped him when he was in bad trouble. The gentleman’s education and life have turned him from a simple, honest, kind-hearted country boy into a vain, selfish, snobbish gentleman; I think it’s an irony of England’s social system.
A writer’s work in certain time shows the writer’s thought of that time. From these of Dickens’ works we could clear that as the time goes by his opinion about life, about the society is also changing. At the beginning, though life is hard he still could see its good side, still have confidence in life; then after some times he began to show his displeasure about the society and the sympathy to the lower class; and his works became more and more mature. I think among these Great Expectations is the most successful and most mature one, I like it best. Zhang Boxiang (2005:197) wrote: the later period marks the development of Dickens towards a highly conscious artist of the modern type; the novels become heavily symbolic, not only providing the work a predominant atmosphere but also highlighting its central concern.

3.2.2 Dickens’ writing style
1) A Master Story-teller
Zhang Boxiang (2005:200) said Dickens is a genius in story-telling. In his novel David Copperfield, as story-telling he certainly did an excellent job; but I think he did best in Great Expectations. In the novel Pip narrated his story many years after the events of the novel took place. Nar