This definitions covers Key Terms within Theme: Guilt & Crime for GCSE English Literature. Revise Theme: Guilt & Crime in Great Expectations for GCSE English Literature with 12 exam-style questions and 13 flashcards. This topic shows up very often in GCSE exams, so students should be able to explain it clearly, not just recognise the term. It is section 10 of 16 in this topic. Make sure you can use the exact wording confidently, because definition marks are often lost through vague language.
📖 Key Terms
- Retrospective narration
- A narrative told by an older version of the protagonist looking back on past events. Dickens uses this to embed dramatic irony — the narrator knows what the younger self does not, so guilt is carried silently in the telling.
- Dramatic irony
- When the reader (or narrator) knows something a character does not. Pip's pride in his expectations is dramatised ironically because we sense — and the narrator knows — that those expectations come from a source Pip would be horrified by.
- Close narration
- A narrative technique where the narrator's voice blends with a character's thoughts without quotation marks or "he thought." Dickens uses it to show Pip's guilt and shame from inside Pip's consciousness.
- Structural irony
- When the plot's architecture itself creates ironic meaning. Dickens structures Great Expectations so that Pip's rise and his entanglement with criminality are the same trajectory — the irony is built into the novel's shape, not just its language.
Practice questions for Theme: Guilt & Crime
In Chapter 1, how does young Pip feel when he is near Magwitch on the marshes?
Identify ONE technique Dickens uses in 'I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime' and explain how it shapes the reader's understanding of Pip's guilt. (2 marks)