Chapters 1 to 9 — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Chapters 1 to 9
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The first stage begins: the convict in the churchyard, Christmas Day and the hunt on the marshes, Pip's guilt,
and his first visit to Miss Havisham and Estella at Satis House.
What each chapter establishes about character and theme, with key quotations.
Key quotations: 'the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip', 'A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg', 'Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!', 'brought me up by hand', 'Why is it that the young are never grateful?', 'we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur', 'the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like the prisoners', 'I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right', 'the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see', 'stopped at twenty minutes to nine', 'I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress', 'And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!', 'there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice', 'Pause you who read this'.
Form: the older Pip narrating his childhood, the Gothic churchyard and marshes, and Satis House, where time has stopped.
Context: the prison hulks moored off the marshes, and the soldiers' hunt for the escaped convicts.
OCR's question on this novel is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the novel elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the novel, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts when it is relevant to the question, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
