Great Expectations is a novel written by Charles Dickens that illustrates a strong relationship between parents and children. Dickens himself had a very tough life, his father was imprisoned and he had to work starting at a very young age. The title “Great Expectations” fits him well as Dickens always wanted to go far in life and break out of the working class. The novel is set in Victorian England, where major social changes were taking place within the country. Many children would work up to sixteen hours a day trying to earn enough money to help support their parents. The main theme that Great expectations seems to suggest about parents is that they are not always there, and if they are there they may be unsatisfactory.
Several of the main characters in Great Expectations grow up with the absence of their parents. Pip is an orphan who only knows his parents from their gravestone. “As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them. (1) He does not even have a photograph of his parents to show him what they looked like. Mr. Joe who is the “Angle In The House” along with Magwitch would be the substitute parents to Pip. Magwitch becomes Pip’s secret benefactor establishing Pip with a steady income, while Mr. Joe offers him sincerity and kindness. The fact that Joe forgave Pip after he was so rude to him after traveling to London, illustrates a strong parental bond between the two, because parents should always forgive their children. Although Estella has grown up with the physical support from Miss Havisham, she is also living with the absence of her real parents. Estella is manipulated by Miss Havisham’s inability to love, which ends up taking a toll on her. Estella even admits to Pip that she d...
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...tten into trouble with the law before. It seems that without parental stability, kids are faced with choices that they would normally be able to make with the help of a parent. But when you take the parental figure out of the picture, these kids are not able to properly evaluate their actions, which may lead to doing something irrational.
Overall it is very important to have a strong parental figure in your life as you develop throughout life. Without a strong parental figure, it will make life harder and more challenging for that child as he grows throughout life. Pip, Magwitch, and Estella were all characters in the novel that grew up without their parents. While Estella and Pip are given substitute parents, some characters such as Clara and Herbert had unsatisfactory parents. This absence of parental stability affected these characters in one-way or another.
eyes of a child so it will be memorable to him as he will never forget
Collectively, these major novels overflow with orphans, adoptive parents, guardians, and failed parent-child relationships. Oliver, the main character in Oliver Twist, must forget about his "infantile past" (Marcus 182) in order to seek "the idyllic future" (Marcus 182). He gets hurled from orphanages to foster parents and so on until he finds himself a portion of the "wrong crowd." The pickpockets take him under their authority and attempt to show him the ropes of the embezzling operation. The orphan adapts well to the swindling lifestyle of Fagin and the boys, and through a series of mischievous choices, authorities apprehend him for stealing (although Dodger was the true felon), and Oliver must live with the consequences. Great Expectations also emphasizes the process of growing up through Pip, the main character. Pip's mother and father passed away while he was young, and he was forced to reside in the house of his older sister and her husband. The boy obtains many idealistic fathers, including Joe, Magwitch, Jaggers and Pumblechook, but none of these men can give him what he needs from a predecessor. Dickens demonstrates to the reader the consequences that bad parenting has on children. Some children are warped by the "knottiest roots" (Lucas 141). Pip, Estella, and Magwitch are all examples of hurt children. The bitter children dwell on their past, or "what has been forgotten" (Marcus 182), and blame the parents for their sufferings. Other children such as Joe and Herbert survive bad parents and go on with their lives, not letting the history affect the outlook.
Charles Dickens utilizes his life for inspiration for the protagonist Pip in his novel Great Expectations. They both struggle with their social standing. Dickens loved plays and theatre and therefore incorporated them into Pip’s life. Dickens died happy in the middle class and Pip died happy in the middle class. The connection Dickens makes with his life to Pip’s life is undeniable. If readers understand Dickens and his upbringing then readers can understand how and why he created Pip’s upbringing. Charles Dickens’ life, full of highs and lows, mirrors that of Pip’s life. Their lives began the same and ended the same. To understand the difficulty of Dickens’ childhood is to understand why his writing focuses on the English social structure. Dickens’ life revolved around social standing. He was born in the lower class but wasn’t miserable. After his father fell into tremendous debt he was forced into work at a young age. He had to work his way to a higher social standing. Because of Dicken’s constant fighting of class the English social structure is buried beneath the surface in nearly all of his writings. In Great Expectations Pip’s life mirrors Dickens’ in the start of low class and the rise to a comfortable life. Fortunately for Dickens, he does not fall again as Pip does. However, Pip and Dickens both end up in a stable social standing.
In Great Expectations, Pip was one of lower class. Although he did not have the fortunes, Pip was happy. Once he was introduced to the rich Miss Havisham and her daughter Estella, he fell in love. Estella became the object of his affection, yet because she was considered high class, there wou...
The settings of Great Expectations are Pip’s homes, one home that he lives in during his childhood in Kent, England, and the other that he lives in when he is grown in London, England. Social status was a big deal in the mid-nineteenth century. The rich were highly respected and liked by all, and the poor were treated unkindly and were sometimes made fun of. The rich could have any job that they liked, but the poor would almost always take over the job that their father had. The narrator of Great Expectations is Pip. If the novel were narrated from any other point of view, it would not have the same effect as it does now.
Dickens gives very little emphasis to effects of heredity in Great Expectations. Three major characters, Pip, Estella, and Magwitch, grow up without any contact with their biological parents. Pip’s parents, in fact, never make an appearance, except as a tombstone in the first several paragraphs of the book, and the reader knows as little about them as Pip does. It is impossible to tell what traits Pip might have inherited from them, and such facts seem irrelevant to the plot. Estella, of course, is raised by a vengeful Miss Havisham. In fact, her true mother, when she is discovered, turns out to be capable of violent passion and murder – quite the opposite of Estella’s calm, almost heartless personality. And Magwitch, constantly in and out of jail, “was took up, took up, took up to that extent that [he] reg’larly grow’d up took up” (Dickens 321). These three characters’ environments and upbringings, not their parental heri...
The novel, Great Expectations, presents the story of a young boy growing up and becoming a
There are many factors that contribute to what a person’s life is like, and will end up like. Of those many factors, the influence of others, especially between a father and son, is particularly impactful. In the book Great Expectations; Pip had no father but had many fatherly supporters. Some of his most important influences were: Joe Gargery, Abel Magwitch, Mr. Jaggers, and Matthew Pocket. All four of these father figures had a hand in the shaping of Pip’s personality and destiny. They made Pip the kind, bold, educated, and beloved gentleman he turned out to be in the end. Without these characters, Pip’s story would be unrecognizably different. In Charles Dickens’s novel, Great Expectations; Joe, Jaggers, Matthew, and Magwitch played important parts that contributed to Pip’s personal development and life story.
Estella is raised in a prosperous household and is judgmental of Pip because he is from the working class. She insults his appearance when she says, "But he is a common laboring boy. And look at his boots! (Dickens 45)" because he is not of the upper class. She also criticizes the way he speaks when he calls one of the playing cards Jacks instead of Knaves (Dickens 46). Dickens uses her negative comments about Pip’s appearance and use of slang to highlight the differences between the two classes. She also insults Pip with a comment calling him a “stupid, clumsy laboring boy (Dickens46)." Because of the differences between their classes, she instantly labels him as unintelligent because of the way she has been raised with uncommon people. Pip thinks about what Estella would think of his family and what Joe does to earn a living. Pip also contemplates how his sister and Joe eat dinner at the kitchen table and how
Charles Dickens’ aptly titled novel Great Expectations focuses on the journey of the stories chief protagonist, Pip, to fulfill the expectations of his life that have been set for him by external forces. The fusing of the seemingly unattainable aspects of high society and upper class, coupled with Pip’s insatiable desire to reach such status, drives him to realize these expectations that have been prescribed for him. The encompassing desire that he feels stems from his experiences with Mrs. Havisham and the unbridled passion that he feels for Estella. Pip realizes that due to the society-imposed caste system that he is trapped in, he will never be able to acquire Estella’s love working as a lowly blacksmith at the forge. The gloomy realizations that Pip is undergoing cause him to categorically despise everything about himself, feeling ashamed for the life he is living when illuminated by the throngs of the upper class.
The first part of Dickens' novel, Great Expectations, is an account of the childhood of, Pip, the main character of the novel. In these beginning chapters Dickens paints an extremely vivid picture of childhood. The reader is able to enter Pip's mind and see the world through the eyes of a child. This is possible because Dickens understood the thoughts and feelings of children and applied this to Pip's every thought and action when he wrote the novel. Dickens had an obvious gift for creating child characters in his works. The word "pip" itself refers to a seed from a plant. Seeds need to be nurtured if they are to grow and flourish. In order to understand both Dickens' talent and his compulsion to write about children it important to realize that through the characters in his novels he took up the plight of all children. In Dickens' view of childhood, he felt that children have certain needs: guidance in a nurturing home, to be free from emotional and physical abuse, to have a good education, and to be allowed to use their imaginations. In order for children to succeed in life he felt these needs must be met. Through his portrayal of child characters in the novel, Great Expectations, Dickens' demonstrates how adults rarely, nor adequately provided for the particular needs that children have.
Josh Billings once said "to bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while". There are few things as important in the development of youth as the influence of the adults that surround them. The example of influential adults will almost always dictate, in some way, the behaviour of children. Young people look for role models and examples in the adults they meet. In Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations (1860), vivid adult characters such as the eccentric Miss Havisham, the enigmatic lawyer Jaggers, the simple but kind blacksmith Joe and the mysterious convict Magwitch have fundamental influences over the development of the story's protagonist, Pip. They do this in two ways. In a novel about a young man's moral education, the major secondary adult characters in the story contribute to Pip's growth either as instigators of his expectations or as paternal figures or sometimes as both.
Firstly, the title of Charles Dickens’ work, Great Expectations, directly suggests the idea of a process of anticipation, maturation, and self-discovery through experience as Pip moves from childhood to adulthood. Charles Dickens begins the development of his character Pip as an innocent, unsophisticated orphan boy. Looking at his parent’s tombstone, Pip draws the conclusion: “the shape of the letters on my father’s gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair” (1). Here, Pip is in a sense self-taught. He does not have much communication with his sister Mrs. Joe Gargery (who adopted him) about the background and history of his parents; in fact, they do not talk much at all about any...
Nature and instinct of mankind harvests a constant craving, lust, and ambitious drive for self-improvement. The struggles of life to have one’s voice heard, make a difference, be loved and remembered, strives individuals to leave an eternal mark on mankind’s earth dwelling timeline. These motives keep us moving forward day by day. In the novel Great Expectations, Charles Dickens tells the tale of a glaringly ambitious orphan child “raised by hand” (5) elbowing his way up the social class ladder during the Victorian Era. The vicissitudes and unexpected events in his life, stand no chance against the instinctively driven and sustained determination that overpowers him.
Pip comes from a lower class family of the Victorian era. The reader first meets Pip around the age of 6, when he explains that his parents, as well as 5 of his brothers, have all passed and he has been raised by his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and her husband Joe Gargery. His sister continuously reminds Pip about her having brought him up “by hand” (Dickens 7) and even details her regrets about having taken him in as her own child saying “I’d never do it again!” (Dickens 8). Despite the rough upbringing, or perhaps because of the rough upbringing, Pip has high hopes of one day becoming a gentleman and continuously dreams of what his life will be like once he is part of the upper class. These aspirations indicate that Pip has great expectations for himself. He expects to become a perfect gentleman and climb the social status ladder. Soon after explaining his home situation, Pip describes to the reader of his encounter with Ms. Havisham, who he describes as “an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal hous...