Great Expectations Guilt Essay

Imagine a lifeless body… Taken over and controlled by guilt and shame. Right from the start, guilt took over the characters of Great Expectations. For some, it worked slowly, they have no idea of the wrongs they commit until later when the guilt and shame begin to consume them. For others, however, the guilt comes quickly. It suffocates them and causes them to suffer for a long time. In the story Great Expectations, guilt takes over many people and shadows their hearts in darkness. Some do not know of their wrongdoings and others do. Those that are aware, allow guilt to eat at them. Those that are unaware, however, later on realize what they have done. Now some may say guilt goes away with time, but imagine a fight between two friends. While in the stage of guilt following the argument, nothing can bring them

To begin with, Pip allows his guilt to eat at him for every wrong doing he commits, but later uses his actions as a way to make up for his faults because he knows his life is going down the wrong path. To start, Dickens’ novel Great Expectations demonstrates that guilt leads to a person's downfall when Pip is ¨In mortal terror of [himself], from whom and awful promise [has] been extracted¨ (Dickens 13). As a result of this, the evidence proves that Pip is miserable for a long time. Due to the deal he makes with the convict he meets, he is unable to sleep at night and begins to see things. He allows his guilt to consume him but never tries to change anything because he believes there is no way to do so that does not involve him getting into trouble. That will later change. After that, the novel portrays a sense of shame through Pip when he is feeling ¨miserable to be ashamed of home¨ (Dickens 106). Accordingly, this reflects that he is not feeling guilty for his own actions but is feeling ashamed of how his emotions and feelings towards home