Close Reading Exercise Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Close Reading Exercise - Essay Example n a room that was â€Å"well lighted with wax candles†, but where â€Å"no glimpse of daylight was to be seen†, the author was being indicative of the wealthy spinster’s closed-minded, hypocritical and spiteful nature. Much of the furniture in this room was of forms and uses â€Å"then quite unknown to Pip†. Because Pip was a boy with the â€Å"expectations† to become a gentleman. His life had not yet turned around. It’s an illustration that Dickens was extremely careful in the exercise of characterization. It’s in a tone of irony that Pip refers to the â€Å"fine lady† sitting at the dressing-table. His encounter, in fact, was not with a fine lady, but a â€Å"strange† lady, the strangest he had ever seen or he should ever see; a lady with â€Å"no brightness left†, an old desiccated lady more horrifying than â€Å"waxwork† and â€Å"skeleton†. The objects found scattered around in the room in a haphazard manner are once again a subtle indication of Miss Havisham’s complex nature. In an antithesis, Pip clarifies that â€Å"it was not in the first few moments that he saw all these things, though he saw more of them in the first moments†. These were the things that â€Å"ought to be white†, but were once-white, things that had lost their lustre, were faded and yellow. All of them are a grim pointer to Miss Havisham’s unpleasant past. The description of Miss Havisham’s appearance and the watch and the clock that had stopped at twenty minutes to nine have such a hair-raising visual and mental effect on the reader that one can expect it in few horror stories. â€Å"What will be conceded even by the most disputatious reader† is an illustration of such use of the language that requires even a language expert to take a second reading, to be sure. It’s not at all a coincidence if it reminds one of O. Henry’s writing style. When Miss Havisham commands Pip to play, the allusion to Mr. Pumblechook’s chaise-cart, and that he felt himself â€Å"unequal to the