Herbert Pocket — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Herbert Pocket
Characters
What you need to know
How Dickens presents Herbert Pocket, and how the character develops across the text: the cheerful friend who shows Pip what a true gentleman is, and whom Pip secretly helps.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Come and fight', 'Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking', 'A capitalist,—an Insurer of Ships', 'I am looking about me', 'no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner', 'Think of her bringing-up, and think of Miss Havisham', 'It was the only good thing I had done', 'within two months I was clerk to Clarriker and Co.'.
Context: the gentleman as a matter of conduct rather than birth or wealth.
Herbert as a foil to Drummle and to Pip, and his loyalty when Magwitch returns.
Edexcel's novel question has two parts, and neither marks context: part (a) on the printed extract marks language, form and structure (AO2); part (b) on the novel elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1), not language analysis. Use context only where it explains a reading, and say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
