Plot overview — Great Expectations — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Plot overview
Introduction
What you need to know
The whole novel in brief, stage by stage, and how Pip's three stages of expectations give it its shape.
Where each stage's turning point falls (Jaggers's news in Chapter 18, Magwitch's return in Chapter 39), and how the secret of Pip's benefactor drives the plot.
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.
