In the beginning the reader only sees a simple description of the problematic life of an orphan during Victorian England. Dickens developed Pip as the narrator and protagonist of Great Expectations which helps the reader to understand the critique expressed with the novel. Through Pip’s eyes, the reader sees clearly the economic gap between rich and poor, and the social split between the upper and lower classes. More important, since Dickens describes Pip’s struggle to climb that socioeconomic ladder through education and self-improvement, the reader begins to grasp the fundamental social injustice of such societal inequality.

After reading the novel and giving some deeper thoughts to it, I asked myself the question of whether Dickens iss

Finally, however, Pip does not find real happiness in his success. He describes his sudden good fortune with great irony: [it is] “very sorrowful and strange that this first night of my bright fortunes should be the loneliest I had ever known.” (Dickens, 1996, p. 169).

Pip’s sense of injustice grows as he comes to understand that he is as good, if not better, than many of the upper-class men and women he encounters. Nonetheless, he fights against a world that forces such injustice even on children. "In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice." (Dickens, 1996, p. 70). It is Pip’s bitter hatred for this social system that brings him success. His ambition leaves me as the reader wondering if he might well have found his fortune even without Magwitch’s help.

That shows exactly today’s ideals in society; people are willing to give up all important values, such as friendship and love, to achieve a better status in society and become more accepted by other people. These days, people define their own identity and values based on what others are expecting and saying. Individual personalities are hard to find, everybody is just a mirror of the entire society. But our society assumes that this kind of equality or likeness is the ultimate goal to accomplish something. I think those aspects of “individual” identities in our culture are exactly described by Pips behavior.

In fact, his fight for upward mobility and his desire to improve his place in life, is a concept that now largely defines the American dream. Howeve

Some topics in this essay:
Victorian England, Estella Pip, England Dickens, Finally Pip, Estella Pip’s, Europe Expectations, Charles Dickens, true gentleman, dickens 1996, St Martin’s, lower classes, victorian england, social status, 21st century, social inequalities, social inequality, social injustice,