Writer's methods — Great Expectations — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Writer's methods
Writer's methods
What you need to know
How Dickens's form, structure and language create meaning: the first-person narrator looking back, the three stages and the serial's weekly parts,
Gothic settings and symbols, caricature and comedy, dialect, and doubles and foils.
First-person narration looking back: the older Pip judging his younger self with irony, regret and hindsight.
Structure: three stages of Pip's expectations, short chapters written for weekly parts, a secret kept until Magwitch's return, and the revised ending.
Setting and symbol: the marshes and mists, Satis House and its stopped clocks, the wedding cake, fire, hands, and the irons and chains of crime.
Characterisation: caricature and comic names (Pumblechook, Wopsle), dialect for Joe and Magwitch, and doubles and foils such as Orlick, Drummle and Herbert.
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.
