From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler

as he seized me by the chin.
    "Oh, don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir."
    "Tell us your name," said the man. "Quick!"
    "Pip, sir."
    "Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"
    "Pip. Pip, sir."
    "Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"
    I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat inshore, among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
    The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself—for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet—when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously.
    Dickens begins with what they call the establishing shot. We're at "a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard ..." We get a long shot in the gathering dark of the churchyard. And then, what does Dickens do? He cuts to close-ups and pans one after another along the tombstones—as we can tell from the formal phrasing "Late of the parish":
    . . . that Philip Pirrip, Late of the Parish, and Also Georgiana Wife of the Above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried.
    These are, in fact, the graves of Pip's dead father, his dead mother, and dead brother, dead brother, dead brother, dead brother, dead brother—one after another.
    You see the absolutely essential quality of fiction-as-film when you see what he does then. We go from that last dead brother to what?
    . . . and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes . . .
    He lifts his camera from the dead brother and looks off to a long shot out over the mounds and gates and dikes to the marshes, beyond the churchyard, and then where?
    . . . and that the low, leaden line beyond was the river. . .
    Then we go to an even longer shot:
    ... and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea . . .
    He takes us to an extreme shot at the farthest horizon. Then what? He cuts from that distant horizon to a close-up of the orphan child, the narrator of our novel, "the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was Pip."
    How many writers would do this, with perfect logic?
    My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, Late of the Parish, and Also Georgiana Wife of the Above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was Pip.
    Perfectly logical. Perfectly thoughtful. Dead father, dead mother, dead brother, dead brother, dead brother, dead brother, dead brother, last remaining child of the family.
    Montage, of course. But in such a novel, where you went from the last dead brother to the remaining child, you would be in a totally different world from the one that Dickens is creating. You would be in a world where the focus is on the plight of an orphan, a family in trouble—a sociological problem, a sentimental tale of a struggling child.
    Dickens's world is about something far greater, and Pip does not yearn for a family; he yearns for his destiny. When you move from that last dead child to the marshes and the river and to the far horizon, and the whole sensual world is bleak and empty and mysterious,