Great+Expectations


 * Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day. 

 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens **

** About the Author: **  Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in England. When he was 12, his father was imprisoned for debt and Dickens was forced to work in Warren's Blacking Factory, an experience which haunted him for the rest of his life. When his father was released, his mother insisted that he continue working at the factory. He was saved from this fate by his father, but this served as the source of a common thread in many of his novel, including //Great Expectations//, of alienation and betrayal. In many ways, //Great Expectations// was Dickens' attempt to exorcise the ghosts of his past. Pip's sense of thwarted ambition reflects Dicken's brief time at Waring's Blacking Warehouse. Pip's shame and dread that Estella should see him at the forge (98) mirrors Dicken's shame at being watched as he worked at the warehouse. Pip's sense of being meant for something better mirrors Dicken's pride that even during the time that he worked alongside commoners, they referred to him as "the young gentleman." (//The Life of Charles Dickens//, J.W.T. Ley, 29). When he was older, he became a reporter, and then started writing a popular series of short texts. He was extremely successful, and toward the end of his life, began giving public readings of his novels. He was, however, emotionally insecure from the events of his childhood. Though he was brilliant and charming, his emotional insecurity caused the end of his marriage to Catherine Hogarth, with whom he had ten children. Like much of Dicken's stories, //Great Expectations// is a reflection of his deepest concerns. He was unsatisfied with his life, having children who wouldn't "do anything for themselves," a mother who was slowly slipping into senile decay, and a brother who died and left behind a widow and five children (//Pilgrim Edition... Letter of Charles Dickens//, 287). "I am quite weighed down and loaded and chained in life," he told W.H. Wills (//Pilgrim Edition... Letter of Charles Dickens//, 391). While writing a series of essays for his periodical //All the Year Round// the general heading of //The Uncommercial Traveller//, he describes lonely walks through London, visits the Paris Morgue, and lingers outside Newgate, where so many had been executed. He became obsessed with three subjects: the resurrection of the dead, the chains of remembrance, and the ambition of children, which are all shown in the opening scene of //Great Expectations//. He is one of the most famous writers of all time, having written such classics as //Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol,// and //A Tale of Two Cities//. To learn more about Charles Dickens, click [|here]

//Great Expectations// is a tale about the rise of a common boy named Pip. It is set in the mid 1800s, around the period when Dickens lived. The novel is divided into three sections; the first, when Pip is a child of around seven, the second, when he is growing up, and the third, when he is 23 and older. Pip is an orphan, brought up by his domineering and impatient sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery. Her husband, Joe, is a blacksmith and a simpleton. He is affectionate towards Pip, but lacks the courage and strength to stand up to his wife. As a result, Pip is frequently criticized, belittled, and beat with "Ticker," a wax ended cane that has been worn smooth by how much Pip has been "tickled" (8). However, soon, he receives an invitation to go and "play" at Miss Havisham's decrepit mansion. Nothing much is known about Miss Havisham because she hasn't ventured outside her house for years. What is known, however, is that she is extremely rich, if a little eccentric. When he arrives, he is escorted in by Estella, a girl near his age, who is beautiful and aloof and cruel to him. For the first time, Pip is made aware of his common birth and status, and for the first time, he feels dissatisfaction with his station in life. Miss Havisham is an old woman, forever in her old, tattered, and yellowed wedding dress, and always wearing the same one white shoe that she wore years ago when her fiancee took her money and left her. The clocks are all stopped in her house at twenty minutes to nine, the time that it was when that disaster occurred. Estella has been adopted by this strange lady, and Pip is awed and hurt by her, as Miss Havisham intends. Because of her painful experiences with love, she tells Pip to "Love her, love her, love her!... If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces- and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper- love her, love her, love her!" (219) A few months after this meeting, he receives a notice from a mysterious benefactor, who bequeaths money upon Pip to go to London and learn to be a gentleman. As he does so, he learns of the vices of money and the life that goes with it. His character flaws grow as he has nothing to shape his morals and no one to guide him any longer. He falls deeper and deeper in love with Estella, all the while knowing that "...everything in our intercourse did give me pain... So it always was." (245) He also knows that, "I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death." (274) Will she ever reciprocate his feelings? Who is his mysterious benefactor? What will become of Pip, a man who has money and nothing to do and weaknesses that he cannot fix?
 * Plot Synopsis: **

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 *  A movie was made based on this classic novel in 1947. To get a better feel of the mood and setting of the story, watch the trailer below. ** 

 **Literary Analysis:**  One important component of //Great Expectations// is the emphasis placed on the chains that link us to our past. In the opening scene of //Great Expectations//, Pip has a chance encounter with a convict named Magwitch. This meeting stays in Pip's mind long after Magwitch disappears, and is an introduction to the place Magwitch will take later in Pip's life. After his encounter with Magwitch, Pip convinces himself that he is tainted and dirty, a conviction that makes itself felt in the rest of his life. Pip's guilty tone in his narrative feeds on the assuption that some children are innately depraved. Unlike //Oliver Twist//, which had the simple moral scheme of Oliver remaining pure at heart despite moving through underworld dens swarming with vice and receiving a legacy and rewards for being such a young gentleman, Pip is not saintly and perfect. Pip fights Herbert, a young gentleman near his age, and when he returns to the scene where that fight was fought, he covers the "traces of gore" with garden-mould "from the eye of man" (86). This occurrence suggests that Pip is on a path to crimes, and that traumatic experiences suffered early in life set patterns for later habits and obsessions and follow a person from childhood to adulthood, a theme of //Great Expectations//. Even when Pip appears to be speaking about something else, his voice always returns to his secret anxieties. For example, when he returns home to Kent, he notices Trabb's boy loitering outside the public house, "true to his ancient habit of happening to be everywhere where he had no business" (394). This could very well describe Pip's life. He lives at someone else's expense in London, the heart of the British economy, and truly has no business there. Arriving in London for the first time, he notices that Jaggers, a lawyer, has an office that is "greasy with shoulders" (150), and later, in Newgate Prison, he describes the hat of one of Jaggers' client's hats as having "a greasy and fatty surface like cold broth" (239). This idea that people leave traces of themselves behind suggests the lasting contact of individuals on the world and the consequences of removing something from its proper place. Dickens often returns to the metaphor of forging and hammering life. Joe remembers how his father "hammered away" at his mother, and Estella, in the last scene, quietly says that she has been "bent and broken, but-I hope-into a better shape" (42, 442). They serve as warnings that real lives are difficult to beat into shape, and that the damage is lasting. //Great Expectations// also shows a development of thought. It starts with Pip's ambition to better himself, and the novel ends with the revelation that Joe has quietly pad off Pip's debts. When he does, Pip penitently and gratefully whispers "O God bless this gentle Christian man" (423). The placing of Christian between gentle and man is a subtle intervention, separating the word 'gentleman' into its classless elements, "gentle" and "man." He bridged the gap with a word that represented honesty, truthfulness, courage, and self-respect. The fact that this takes the form of a prayer shows that Pip is practicing what he preaches. In blessing Joe like this, Pip finally achieves his own ambition of becoming a true gentleman, accepting others for what they are, being humble, and being thankful for them.

 **Literary Style:**  This is written in the genre of social criticism and perhaps autobiographical fiction. It is mainly in elevated language, as was the norm in that time period. There are many stylistic things that Dickens does within the novel. For one, Pip repeats himself often, which, instead of acting as a catchphrase or showing his personality, demonstrates his search for certainty in his uncertain world. Some of these are only a few words or phrases, returned to after the passage of many years and many chapters, while others are more obvious, but all these echoes dramatize memory's unpredictable powers of rooting and rummaging. Dickens created a narrative voice caught between mastering the past and being at its mercy, which is one of the novel's central themes. Also, Dickens has the older, more experienced Pip narrate, while the young, innocent Pip acts. This double-voiced structure is well aligned, and the narration is punctuated with the ironies of hindsight but isn't merely knowing. This is one of Dickens' most subtle novels. Central and peripheral events are constantly swapping places, and even chance events turn out to be part of an inescapable design. Repeated words have huge meanings, and no tiny detail is superfluous to the novel.

I thought that this was an amazing book. Even when Pip was behaving at his worst, his condescension and snobbery at its most intolerable, I still liked Pip. This was probably due to the fact that Dickens never supplies the reader with more information than Pip has. So I was excited when he was excited, I was surprised when he was surprise, I laughed and cried alongside him. And that was what made this novel a success to me. This type of novel is commonly thought to be dry and boring and difficult to read, but //Great Expectations// was none of those things. It was witty, it was touching, and it was a tale of a main character who suffers from the same human flaws as everyone else. It is easily read twice or three times without boredom, for there are always more details to be picked up the next time around. I would recommend it to anyone who is searching for a good book to read.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">Criticism: **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 110%;">

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: center;"> **<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> If you enjoyed this book, you may also enjoy the following: ** (click on the images to read more about them) <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">





<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: left;">** Works Cited ** <span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. Introduction. //Great Expectations//. By Charles Dickens. Suffolk: Oxford University Press, 1993. //<span style="display: inline !important; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-style: normal; line-height: 23px; text-align: left;">The rest of the information is either cited within the text or was created with my own analytical work. //