“A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron
on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied
round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and
lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars;
who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in
his head as he seized me by the chin.”—English novelist Charles Dickens
(1812-1870), Great Expectations (1861)
The other day, while in a coffee shop, I picked up a
copy of the Dickens classic and opened it to its second page, with the above
passage. Wow!
The description grabs you by the scruff of the neck,
not unlike the convict who appears out of nowhere and terrifies young Pip. You
can imagine the terror of this orphan who just wants to mourn the family
members buried here.
You’re fully expecting a crime story, but this is a
novel in which things are not what they seem, and so it is here. Right after
the threat in the dialogue, and that sentence about the “fearful man,” we are
bombarded with verbs that suggest the vulnerability of this convict named
Magwitch: “soaked,” “smothered,” “lamed,” “cut,” “stung,” and “torn.”
It’s no wonder that so much of Dickens’ work has been
adapted for film and TV: any director worth his salt has an unforgettable
picture to work with here.
(The image accompanying this post comes from David
Lean’s magnificent 1946 adaptation of the Dickens novel, with Finlay Currie as
Magwitch and Tony Wager as young Pip.)
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