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Lies And Deceit In Charles Dickens's Great Expectations

Decent Essays

Lies and deceit are major components in the development of the plot of Charles Dickens’s nineteenth-century novel, Great Expectations. Deceit, the action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth, coupled with lying tend to be the prevailing character trait of many of the characters in the novel. As a matter of fact, Dickens not only inaugurates the story with a lie, but the deception continues to shape the plot until the end. One of the fabricators in the novel is Abel Magwitch. Magwitch begins by lying to Pip by threatening to kill and eat the poor, young boy if he does not deliver a file and food to the felon. “You bring them both to me...Or I’ll have your heart and liver out.” (Pg. 6) Once Pip is told what to retrieve, he is informed by Magwitch that another man is with him, a barbaric man who is worse than Magwitch. While saying this, Abel believes he lied to the boy, be that as it may, there is a man lurking around the marshes, a man who is, by the same token, indeed more horrifying than Magwitch. “Now, I ain’t alone, as you may think I am. There’s a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am an Angel.” Once the soldiers arrived, Abel and the other convict, Compeyson, were in the middle of a brawl. Magwitch immediately told the soldiers that he was only trying to capture Compeyson and bring him back in order to be imprisoned. “I took him! I gave him up for you! Mind that!” (Pg. 31) Another time that Abel lied was

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