Charles Dicken's Great Expectations

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Mark Edmonson asks, in, "Why Read?", how one might, "imagine the good life" (Edmonson 26-27). He says that revealing one's nature and becoming vulnerable through this revelation offers the opportunity for change. In Charles Dickens', "Great Expectations", Pip, the main character, experiences an internal change - or ascension - through experience with his similar exterial advancement - or advancement in social class. He realizes that although the good life appears to be at the climax of exterior - or material - advancement, it is actually an internal ascension, or growth, that fills the void of an unsatisfying life. Pip's initial first narrative, before his transformation, aspires towards external - or material - things. From his humble and lower class background, visions of the good life appear to be advancement of social class, increase in wealth, and self-improvement through education. When Pip visits Satis House, the residence of Estelle - the girl he loves - and her very wealthy and old caregiver, he is a young, naive, and poor lad who has his eyes opened for the first time; in regards to social class and what he perceives to be the good life. Perhaps his visions of the good life are Dickens' critique of the masses - a likely naive, young, and poor population - which aspire to obtain the same materialistic and external things. The first embodiment of the initial good life that young Pip covets is a group of people that lift him: Pip wants to rise in social class, surround himself with like characters, and become a gentleman. When he is to be his sister's husband Joe's apprentice Blacksmith, a trade leading to a life of the lower class, Pip reflects, "Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my w... ... middle of paper ... ...re not necessarily as initially assumed. Pip, as a naive, young, and inexperienced person initially believes that a good life encompasses raising oneself socially through classes, self-improving through education, and increasing one's wealth. However, after becoming a gentleman, receiving an education, and receiving a large fortune, a wiser Pip realizes that these external labels and features do not necessarily deliver a good and meaningful life. Instead, it appears Pip changes his final narrative and fills his good life with people he loves - family and friends -, self-improving by aspiring to have a good conscience - and looking up to Joe who is an excellent teacher -, and finally replacing a person's wealth with their worth and value as a human being. Perhaps Dickens' message about a good life applies even moreso in our seemingly fallacious society.

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