Right now I'm at Chapter 13 in Great Expectations. I have a bit of a mixed reaction on the book, some parts of it I really like, and some parts I really dislike.
I'll start off with the positive- I really, really like the descriptions in this book. The way Dickens describes the characters, the plots, the actions...ect, is extremely unique & actually really fun to read. An example would be on page 90 in Chapter 11, when he is describing the fight scene. I love this quote especially: "The second greatest surprise I had ever encountered in my life was seeing him on his back again, looking at me through a black eye". This is so much more interesting to me then a generic "I punched him on the ground and gave him a black eye" line that you could find in any other book. Another example of this great description method would be on page 49 - "It was a dry, cold night, and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die tonight of laying out in the marshes, I thought". The line about the man dying is something I don't think many other authors would put in their books, but I think it adds so much to that description.
On the other hand, I think the characters are very generic and boring, the complete opposite of the descriptions. Pip is the normal "orphan boy" you can find in many stories, Estella is the mean little girl who always picks on the main character, Joe is the comforting parent-like character...in my opinion, the characters are not very interesting and very generic. I'm not sure if that's the point or not, to make the characters generic, but I find them to be very boring.
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I agree with you totally about the descriptions. They're awesome.
When you say generic, I think you mean sterotypical. Sure the characters are these standard type of characters, but I disagree that they are generic. Think about all the complexities and psychologies of the characters! They're so subtley interseting. I hope you think so as we go through the book.
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