The Development of Pip in Great Expectations
As Pip grows throughout the novel, he develops and matures from a naive, young boy to a moral gentleman by the three main stages that take place throughout his life.
In the first stage of Pip's life he is young and does not understand what it means to be a gentleman and how it can affect his life. Pip basically asks for three wishes in the first stage. He wants education, wealth, and social advancement. These three wishes are mostly so he can impress Estella, who is the symbol of this first stage. Pip does not want to be a lowly blacksmith like Joe. He wants to be intelligent. He wants to be considered a person of high importance. At the end of this stage he moves to London and begins to see the problems in the fog ahead.
In the second stage Pip is able to live his dreams of being educated and wealthy. As the second stage progresses he has less and less time for other people outside of his little circle. He mistreats Joe and Biddy. He finds he is embarrassed to be around them. His relationship with Estella also worsens. They had not seen each other in years and the small bond that they had broke in time. Estella then marries Drummle instead of Pip and all his hopes for her are lost as well. Pip also begins to spend too much money and goes into debt even with his secret benefactor giving him money. Once Pip discovers who his benefactor truly is all his dreams are shattered. He cannot believe a criminal had been supplying him with money all this time. Stage two ends with Pip being broken and destroyed with all the problems he faces.
In the third stage Pip tries to repair all his relationships with people he mistreated and loved. Pip finds Herbert a good job even if it means Pip using some of his own money. Pip also tries to help Magwitch escape. Although Magwitch does not escape, Pip makes Magwitch happy before he dies telling him that he has a daughter and that he is in love with her.
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby in order to display the wretchedness of upper-class society in the United States. The time period, the 1920s, was an age of new opulence and wealth for many Americans. As there is an abundance of wealth today, there are many parallels between the behavior of the wealthy in the novel and the behavior of today’s rich. Fitzgerald displays the moral emptiness and lack of personal ethics and responsibility that is evident today throughout the book. He also examines the interactions between social classes and the supposed noblesse oblige of the upper class. The idea of the American dream and the prevalence of materialism are also scrutinized. All of these social issues spoken about in The Great Gatsby are relevant in modern society. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this novel as an indictment of a corrupt American culture that is still present today.
Gatsby is unrealistic. He believes he can relive the past and rekindle the flame he and Daisy once had. He is lost in his dream and accepts that anything can be repeated, "Can't repeat the past…Why of course you can!" (116, Fitzgerald). For Gatsby, failure to realize this resurrection of love is utterly appalling. His whole career, his conception of himself and his life is totally shattered. Gatsby's death when it comes is almost insignificant, for with the collapse of his dream, he is spiritually dead.
something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy” (p. III); if
Fitzgerald, like Jay Gatsby, while enlisted in the army, fell in love with a girl who was enthralled by his newfound wealth. After he was discharged, he devoted himself to a lifestyle of parties and lies in an attempt to win the girl of his dreams back. Daisy, portrayed as Fitzgerald’s dream girl, did not wait for Jay Gatsby; she was consumed by the wealth the Roaring Twenties Era brought at the end of the war. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald presents the themes of wealth, love, memory/past, and lies/deceit through the characters Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom.
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words…-The Great Gatsby, 14
James Gatz, better known as Jay Gatsby is the main character in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This novel is a story about Gatsby, and his relentless pursuit of his one and only dream and goal: Daisy Buchannon. Gatsby and Daisy met in 1917, five years prior to the setting of the novel. The fell in love immediately and spent countless hours together. After a month, Gatsby, at the time a lieutenant, was summoned to go off and fight in World War One. That moment marked Gatsby's loss of Daisy. Ever since that day Gatsby has constantly been trying to re-catch Daisy. Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy somewhat resembles the pursuit a knight has in a holy grail. Knights pursue the holy grail with endless fervor and devotion. Often a knights quest of a holy grail becomes religious and spiritual, due to the qualifications the knight must maintain in order to obtain the grail. Gatsby even compares his quest for Daisy to the quest of a grail:
Gatsby embodies the classic tragic and romantic genre. Gatsby loves Daisy but he cannot be with her because of obstacles in the way of their love such as social class and Tom Buchanan. Gatsby had big dreams for the future because he was living in the past, and Gatsby, a noble and morally just person who was afflicted by the “foul dust (that) floated in the wake of his dreams” (p.2). When Gatsby’s dream fails he sacrifices himself to show his love for Daisy, making him similar to a Christ figure in the novel.
The Great Gatsby is a symbolic novel of the disintegration of the American dream in an era of extraordinary prosperity and material excess. On the surface, we see that it is a story about the love between a man and a woman but the overall theme is the collapse of the American dream in society. We find that every character in their own way is searching for their American dream but as a result, their desire for wealth and pleasure, caused them to find themselves lost in the corruption of the aristocrat society.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is an absurd story, whether considered as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York high life. The occasional insights into character stand out as very green oases on an arid desert of waste paper. Throughout the first half of the book the author shadows his leading character in mystery, but when in the latter part he unfolds his life story it is difficult to find the brains, the cleverness, and the glamour that one might expect of a main character.
Jay Gatsby, aka James Gatz is the subject of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby. Through the course of the novel, this enigmatic and powerful character, defined by his preceding reputation is gradually deconstructed and revealed to be a lovesick man, a hopeless romantic. Understanding this statement affirms the actions taken by Gatsby in the course of the story. Unfortunately his actions also lead to the demise of dream and one himself. In the larger spectrum Gatsby is seen as the archetypical self-made man under the microscope, scrutinized by a prod to unveil what’s beneath the layers of gold and green.
Pip learns the way of life and the road to being a gentleman. Pip gets
Throughout Dickens’ novel Great Expectations, the character, personality, and social beliefs of Pip undergo complete transformations as he interacts with an ever-changing pool of characters presented in the book. Pip’s moral values remain more or less constant at the beginning and the end; however, it is evident that in the time between, the years of his maturation and coming of adulthood, he is fledgling to find his place in society. Although Pip is influenced by many characters throughout the novel, his two most influential role models are: Estella, the object of Miss Havisham’s revenge against men, and Magwitch, the benevolent convict. Exposing himself to such diverse characters Pip has to learn to discern right from wrong and chose role models who are worthy of the title.
In the novel, Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens the principal character, Pip, undergoes a tremendous change in character. I would like to explore with you the major incidents in Pip’s childhood that contribute to his change from an innocent child to someone consumed by false values and snobbery.
The main character, Pip, is a gentle character. His traits include humbleness, kindness, and lovingness. These traits are most likely the cause of his childhood poverty. In the beginning of the story, Pip is a mild mannered little boy who goes on with his own humble life. That, though, will change as he meets Magwich, a thief and future benefactor. Pip’s kindness goes out to help the convict, Magwich when he gives food and clothing to him. Magwich tells Pip that he’ll never forget his kindness and will remember Pip always and forever. This is the beginning of Pip’s dynamic change. Throughout the novel, Great Expectations, the character, Pip gradually changes from a kind and humble character to a character that is bitter, then snobbish and finally evolves into the kind and loving character which he was at the beginning of the story.
The most important theme throughout the book can be said to be ambition and self-improvement. Pip at heart is an idealist; whenever he is convinced that something is superior to what he has, he immediately desires to obtain that improvement. This is best illustrated when he sees Satis house, which puts him into a state of mind of desiring to be a wealthy gentleman. In this novel, Pip’s ambition and self-improvement takes three forms: moral, social, and educational. Firstly, he desires moral self-improvement and is very hard on himself when he feels that he acts immorally, by trying to act better in the future. This can be noticed when Pip leaves for London and is disappointed with his behavior towards Biddy and Joe. Secondly he desires social self-improvement, after having fallen in love with Estella, who demands Pip to act according to high society. His fantasies of becoming a gentleman are further fueled by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook. These fantasies prove to be very significant throughout the plot, since the author uses these ideas of social class to explore the class system of his period. Thirdly, Pip desires educational improvement, which is deeply connected to his social ambition and dream of marrying Estella. Ultimately, through the examples of Joe, Biddy and Magwitch, Pip learns that social and educational improvement are irrelevant to one’s real worth and that conscience and affection are to be valued above social ranking.