“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!” A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 1. The grown-up Pip, who narrates the story, describes his terrifying encounter with convict Abel Magwitch as a seven-year-old child. At the start of the novel Magwitch is menacing and frightening. Wearing a telltale leg iron, identifying him as an escaped convict, he issues a deadly threat to Pip. Adding further to the feeling of menace is that the scene takes place in a graveyard. In the depiction of the fugitive like he is a hunted animal who has gone through much pain, Dickens also give us an insight into the harsh conditions prisoners then faced. He describes Magwitch as soaked, lamed, cut, limping and growling. While Magwitch at first appears to be threatening and dangerous, Dickens reminds us that he is a human being. He uses the word “man” four times in the passage to remind us of that.