BRITISH LITERATURESUMMER READING TEST REVIEWGreat Expectations and Wuthering Heights

Great Expectations

Literary Terms

TONE

Reflective, Remorseful, Nostalgic, Bittersweet, Comical, Passionate

The tone of this novel is packed with the emotion of an old man reflecting on the good, the bad, and the ugly of his life.

THEME

Notions of and obsession with society and class lead the protagonist of Great Expectations into self-destruction and a loss of dignity. In the world of this novel, society is divided among class lines, creating impenetrable barriers between social classes. When characters attempt to break through these barriers, they only find loneliness and loss. Society is both exalted as a productive and efficient means of organizing human chaos and it is revealed to be internally rotten.

Figurative Language/simile

I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window as a pocket handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spider's webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade.”

IMAGERY

“So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still….It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.”

Which sense?

Character Identification

Pip

His expectations of life are constantly unmet. Though he is loved and adopted by Joe Gargery (his sister’s husband), he is pretty much alone in the world.

Miss Havisham

She is the owner of Satis House, who was jilted on her wedding day. She is responsible for encouraging Pip’s obsession with Estella and for dangling the carrot of wealth and social class in front of his nose.

Joe Gargery

He is a blacksmith and has little education. He loves Pip unconditionally, and he is a beacon of friendship and loyalty throughout Pip’s life. It is this steadfast love that seems to really break Pip’s heart.

Estella Havisham

She is the star, our protagonist’s love interest. She lights up the novel with her unrivaled beauty.

BUT… Can you imagine living in Satis House with a

mother who wears her wedding dress everyday and who only cares that you grow up to break boys' hearts? Can you imagine having to deal with relatives who only want your mother’s money? Think of sleeping in that run-down house every night, hearing Miss Havisham’s low moaning and mouse-like shuffling all over the floor boards.

Mr. Jaggers

He is Pip’s guardian and Miss Havisham’s lawyer. He also likes to wash his hands. It’s like he’s trying to wash away the grime, the corruption, and the horrors of those he works with everyday.

 

Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights

Character Identification

NELLY DEAN

Serves as the chief oral narrator of Wuthering Heights. (Mustn’t forget that Lockwood is the primary narrator) A sensible, intelligent, and compassionate woman, she grew up essentially alongside Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw and is deeply involved in the story she tells.

 

Hareton Earnshaw

He is easily humiliated, but shows a good heart and a deep desire to improve himself. At the end of the novel, he marries young Catherine.

Isabella Linton

She falls in love with Heathcliff and marries him. He never returns her feelings and treats her as a mere tool in his quest for revenge on the Linton family.

Lockwood

His narration forms a frame around Nelly’s; he serves as an intermediary between Nelly and the reader.

Linton Heathcliff

He is Heathcliff’s son by Isabella. Weak, sniveling, demanding, and constantly ill, Linton is raised in London by his mother and does not meet his father until he is thirteen years old, when he goes to live with him after his mother’s death.

Edgar Linton

He is a well-bred but rather spoiled as a boy. He grows into a tender, constant, but cowardly man. He marries Catherine I.

Joseph

He is a long-winded, fanatically religious, elderly servant at Wuthering Heights. He is strange, stubborn, and unkind, and he speaks with a thick Yorkshire accent.

Young Catherine II

She begins as Catherine Linton and, assuming that she marries Hareton after the end of the story, goes on to become Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine Linton is a kinder, gentler version of her mother, thanks in part to her relationship with Edgar, an extremely dedicated father.

Isn’t that interesting? Just the reverse of her mother Catherine I.

Heathcliff

He is an orphan brought to live at Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw. Heathcliff is the embodiment of what is known by literary types as the Byronic hero – a dark, outsider antihero (kind of likeEdward Cullen from Twilight). He is swarthy, lonerish, and a little demonic, but definitely sexy.

Catherine (I)

She is free-spirited, beautiful, spoiled, and often arrogant. She is given to fits of temper. Catherine falls powerfully in love with Heathcliff, but her desire for social advancement motivates her to marry Edgar Linton instead.

Literary Terms

Symbol

the Moors- the uncultivated land between Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. The playground for Heathcliff and Catherine

THEME

love can be painful and or beautifully reconciling

TONE

Complex, romantic, dark and gloomy The attitudes of our narrators help shape

the tone as the drama unfolds, so that Lockwood's initial curiosity and fascination convey a lighter feeling than after he realizes how sinister Heathcliff is. Whenever Heathcliff is around, the tone tends to grows darker.

Figurative language-simile and metaphor "My love for Linton is like the foliage in

the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees - my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary."

Imagery

“Oh, Heathcliff, you are showing a poor spirit! Come to the glass, and I'll let you see what you should wish. Do you mark those two lines between your eyes, and those thick brows, that instead of rising arched, sink in the middle, and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies? Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes”