How Dickens presents Magwitch, and how the character develops across the text: the terrifying convict who becomes Pip's secret benefactor and, at last, the man Pip stands by.
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: 'Hold your noise!', 'soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars', 'It was some broken wittles', 'I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work', 'Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father', 'that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in', 'I first become aware of myself, down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living', 'In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail', 'I'm quite content to take my chance', 'You've never deserted me, dear boy'.
Context: transportation to New South Wales for life, and why his return to England risks his life.
His dialect, and how Dickens changes the reader's view of him from monster to father.
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.
