How Levy’s descriptions match the plainness of Dickens’ Great Expectations

While reading Reuben Sachs, I was impressed by the way that the text was easy to read yet said a lot. This simple, straight-forward way of writing can also be seen in Dickens’ text. Although Dickens’ texts often implemented anti-semitic language and concepts, and Amy Levy’s text is a progressive and representative text that portrays Jews as everyday people and not the cartoonish stereotypes commonly seen in Victorian literature, I did notice that there was a general similarity between the diction of both of their works. For example, when describing Reuben’s arrival, Levy writes, “”Lionel! Sydney!” protested their mother faintly after the boys seemed to take all sorts of liberties with the new arrivals.” By being straightforward and direct with what is going on in the text, Levy is able to make it more dramatic because her implications are not ambiguous. It is obvious that Mrs. Leuineger is angry from her descriptions. In a similar way, Great Expectations benefited from Dickens’ directness, specifically in chapter 6, when Pip thinks, “In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.” Dickens does not implement any fancy words when describing Pip’s fear of losing Joe’s confidence. He writes the emotions that Pip is feeling confidently and precisely.

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