CHAPTER 1 Practice Quiz — Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: CHAPTER 1
How does the narrator get the name "Pip"?
His real name is Philip Pirrip, but as an infant his tongue could make nothing longer than "Pip" from both names, so that became his name.
Where does Chapter 1 take place?
In a churchyard on the Kent marshes, near the river Thames, about twenty miles from the sea, on a raw afternoon towards evening.
Why is Pip in the churchyard at the start of the novel?
He is visiting the graves of his parents and five infant brothers, all of whom died before he could know them.
How does Pip form impressions of what his parents looked like?
He derives childish conclusions from the shapes of the letters on their tombstones, imagining his father as square, stout, and dark, and his mother as freckled and sickly.
Who raises Pip?
His older sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and her husband Joe Gargery, the village blacksmith.
What does the escaped convict look like when Pip first encounters him?
He is a fearful man in coarse grey clothing with a great iron shackle on his leg, hatless, in broken shoes, with a rag tied round his head, soaked in water and smothered in mud.
What does the convict find when he turns Pip upside down and empties his pockets?
Nothing but a piece of bread, which the convict eats ravenously.
What two items does the convict demand that Pip bring him?
A file to cut through his leg-iron, and food ("wittles").
Where must Pip deliver the file and food?
At the old Battery on the marshes, early the next morning.
What threat does the convict use to ensure Pip's obedience?
He threatens to have Pip's heart and liver torn out, and invents a terrifying "young man" accomplice who can find any boy anywhere and tear him open.
Why does the convict look down at his own leg when Pip mentions Joe Gargery?
Because Pip identifies Joe as a blacksmith, and the convict has an iron shackle on his leg that a blacksmith's file could remove.
What oath does the convict force Pip to swear?
Pip must say "Lord strike you dead if you don't" — swearing to bring the file and food and never tell anyone about the convict.
What theme does Pip's attempt to understand his parents through their tombstones introduce?
The theme of identity and self-knowledge. Pip must construct his sense of self from fragments, since he never knew his parents directly.
How does the convict's leg-iron function as a symbol in Chapter 1?
It symbolizes the justice system, imprisonment, and social constraint. It also establishes the theme of crime and punishment that runs throughout the novel.
What theme is introduced by Pip being coerced into stealing food and a file?
Guilt and moral compromise. Pip's forced promise to steal from his own household plants the seeds of moral anxiety that haunt him through the novel.
What do the marshes symbolize in Great Expectations?
The marshes represent danger and moral uncertainty. Whenever Pip ventures into them, threatening or transformative events occur.
What type of narration does Dickens use in Great Expectations?
First-person retrospective narration — the adult Pip recounts his childhood, blending the child's immediate experience with the older narrator's reflective irony.
What literary device is Dickens using when the cold, hostile landscape mirrors Pip's fear?
Pathetic fallacy — the raw, bleak, windswept setting reflects and amplifies Pip's emotional state of terror and vulnerability.
What is significant about the closing image of the convict limping toward the gibbet?
It is foreshadowing and symbolism. The convict looks "as if he were the pirate come to life," linking him to themes of crime, punishment, and fate that will recur throughout the novel.
What example of dark humor appears in Pip's description of his dead brothers?
Pip says his five infant brothers "gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle," and that he imagined them born on their backs with their hands in their pockets.
What does the word "wittles" mean as the convict uses it?
It is a dialectal pronunciation of "victuals," meaning food or provisions.
What are the "stone lozenges" Pip mentions in the churchyard?
They are small diamond-shaped or coffin-shaped grave markers, each about a foot and a half long, marking the graves of Pip's five dead infant brothers.
What is the significance of the quote "the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip"?
It captures Pip's complete vulnerability and smallness against the vast, threatening landscape, while also establishing his habit of referring to himself in the third person at moments of intense emotion.
What does the convict mean when he says "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel"?
He envies creatures that can survive in the cold, wet marshes. The remark reveals his desperate physical misery and also injects a moment of dark, almost pitiable humor.