... of course a great novelist, marrying Maria Beadnell (1830) only to divorce again three years later (1833). One year later (1834), Charles adopted a little boy, whose father also was sent to prison. In 1835 Charles met and became engaged to Catherine Hogarth. They also divorced in the year of 1858. Afterwards ... On June the 9th, 1870 Charles died from a stroke. The stroke was presumably caused by Charles's hard working habits. The novel A Christmas Carol is about an old grumpy man called Ebenezer Scrooge. Ebenezer is a very greedy man, and he couldn't care less for others (or Christmas)....

• Word Count: 770
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... later to fall madly in love with. It is here that he is referred to only as boy. It is here that he forms his "Great Expectations". From these experiences Pip finds out about what he considers polite society, but Satis House is a place where society is anything but ... polite. This is exemplified by Estella's blatant lack of regard for Pip's feelings; she points out to him for the first time his faults such as his "coarse hands . thick boots" and the fact that he is nothing but "a common labouring boy ... describes Estella as "very pretty" yet "very insulting". Unperturbed by this descr...

• Word Count: 681
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... and downs, twists and turns and is all linked together by the main character, Pip. Great Expectations is about how a young boy named Pip wants to become a gentleman and gets the chance to do it. As a boy, he lived with his sister and her husband who worked as a blacksmith. He lives with them because Pip ... with Estella, her niece whom she has trained to reject all men. Pip believes Estella is extremely beautiful, but she rejects him and calls Pip a "common boy." This is one of the reasons Pip accepts his Great Expectations. Later in the book a man who calls himself Jaggers approaches Pi...

• Word Count: 1216
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... looks back on his life at key episodes. Pip tells his story from the time when he is seven, and is an innocent boy from a poor background, until he is twenty-three. One theme of the book is about the realisation of class and how Pip became ashamed of his background and strove, through a mysterious donation of income, to improve himself. In ... the tombstones of his brothers and how he envisages them and how his parents looked, all these images cause the reader to feel great sympathy and sorrow for the little boy who knows not the comfort of a loving secure environment. "As I never saw m...

• Word Count: 1797
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... Wild for Best Supporting Actor. To put it bluntly, the film was a hit! At 153 minutes long, the heart felt story of Oliver Twist, a young boy forced to grow up in an orphanage until one day his hunger pains and an unfortunate pick when drawing straws causes Oliver to do what no one has dared to ... the Orphanage Mr. Bumble, "please sir, may I have some more?" These prove to be fateful words for young boy. Mr. Bumble sees Oliver as greedy and decides to sell by walking down the street with him singing "boy, boy for sale." Mr. Bumble ended up selling Oliver to Mr. Sowerberry, the local und...

• Word Count: 691
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... expose the injustice of 19th Century Britain, and its controversial (by today's standards) view of the poor in society. Oliver Twist depicts the story of a young boy's life and how he must choose the path between good and evil. He meets many people on this journey - some that try to lure him to evil ... characters in Oliver Twist, but his importance is great. He is the one responsible for nearly all of Oliver's misadventures: he paid Fagin to corrupt the young boy. The reason for this was because Monks is Oliver's half brother - they shared the same mother - and was simply jealous of him....

• Word Count: 1323
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... the switch comes with the fog being 'in the eyes and throats' and 'cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck' to the metaphorical. The latter, while it could still be considered a physical fog, indicates instead the extended metaphor of the city's sickness, ... concern was primarily the social hierarchy and how fair, or unfair, it was. In the given passage, as mentioned previously, the fog cruelly pinches the little boy and yet, here, where it all comes to a head, 'the raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest' there sit...

• Word Count: 1875
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Being raised by his sister and brother-in-law in Kent, England, Pip is an innocent, compassionate but lonely young boy. As Pip gets older and is introduced to new people (upper class), he second-guesses his life and what he wants. Believing that anything less than ... his sights on a new and "improved" way of life. During the process, he becomes snobbish and proud. As Pip falls deeper into debt and confusion about his own life, everything around him begins to fall and collapse. Once Pip hits rock bottom, the man who was the true gentleman in th...

• Word Count: 656
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see-1. Miss Havisham had paid Pip a premium of twenty-five guineas for going there. "The boy has been a good boy here, and that is this reward.""2 She looks like a fairy godmother to him since then. "She is making her crutch stick play round me, as if she, the fairy ... mean stole, said the sergeant. And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's.-16 Magwitch is Pip's benefactor, who used his wealth to make Pip a gentleman. "Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me what has done it!-17 "Look'ee he...

• Word Count: 2002
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see-1. Miss Havisham had paid Pip a premium of twenty-five guineas for going there. "The boy has been a good boy here, and that is this reward.""2 She looks like a fairy godmother to him since then. "She is making her crutch stick play round me, as if she, the fairy ... mean stole, said the sergeant. And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's.-16 Magwitch is Pip's benefactor, who used his wealth to make Pip a gentleman. "Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me what has done it!-17 "Look'ee he...

• Word Count: 2002
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see-1. Miss Havisham had paid Pip a premium of twenty-five guineas for going there. "The boy has been a good boy here, and that is this reward.""2 She looks like a fairy godmother to him since then. "She is making her crutch stick play round me, as if she, the fairy ... mean stole, said the sergeant. And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's.-16 Magwitch is Pip's benefactor, who used his wealth to make Pip a gentleman. "Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me what has done it!-17 "Look'ee he...

• Word Count: 2002
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see-1. Miss Havisham had paid Pip a premium of twenty-five guineas for going there. "The boy has been a good boy here, and that is this reward.""2 She looks like a fairy godmother to him since then. "She is making her crutch stick play round me, as if she, the fairy ... mean stole, said the sergeant. And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's.-16 Magwitch is Pip's benefactor, who used his wealth to make Pip a gentleman. "Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me what has done it!-17 "Look'ee he...

• Word Count: 2002
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see-1. Miss Havisham had paid Pip a premium of twenty-five guineas for going there. "The boy has been a good boy here, and that is this reward.""2 She looks like a fairy godmother to him since then. "She is making her crutch stick play round me, as if she, the fairy ... mean stole, said the sergeant. And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's.-16 Magwitch is Pip's benefactor, who used his wealth to make Pip a gentleman. "Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me what has done it!-17 "Look'ee he...

• Word Count: 2002
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... The convict does many years later show his real gratitude. At his sister's house Pip is a boy without "expectations". Mrs. Joe beats him alot and is never nice and never has anything good to say about her little brother. Her husband Joe is a really nice man and although he's a blacksmith who ... entire class system is made reference to. People's expectations(Great Expectations) are talked about and Dickens ever touches on finding ourselves as people. References to the class system can be found when Pip was a young boy he greatly admires Joe who is a blacksmith Joe's class status makes n...

• Word Count: 2825
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

... on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see-1. Miss Havisham had paid Pip a premium of twenty-five guineas for going there. "The boy has been a good boy here, and that is this reward.""2 She looks like a fairy godmother to him since then. "She is making her crutch stick play round me, as if she, the fairy ... mean stole, said the sergeant. And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's.-16 Magwitch is Pip's benefactor, who used his wealth to make Pip a gentleman. "Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me what has done it!-17 "Look'ee he...

• Word Count: 1999
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... return to Satis House the place of their first encounter. In their first meeting there was a definite distinction between their classes. Pip the blacksmith's boy and Estella the ward of a wealthy woman. However at this meeting they are sitting next to one and other on a bench. This signifies equality ... person's social class or desire for a higher social standing can cloud people's thoughts. They seem to lash out with harsh words and not think about the feelings of others. Pip and Estella's social standing often put them in the position of either being the deliverer or the recipient of ...

• Word Count: 2210
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

... he first did this by naming himself Pip. He pictures the family he never knew from their tombstones. He's a tragic figure of a lonely little boy hanging around an empty cemetery, but at the same time he's got a comical way of describing his imaginative ideas. Dickens plunges quickly into his ... first scene- the incident on which the whole plot is based. A sweeping view of bleak marshland finally focuses on the boy, shivering with fear as well as cold. Then, swift and unexpected, a violent figure looms up from the graves. The convict is described in ... iron off his leg. Read the convic...

• Word Count: 571
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... dream of becoming a gentleman is realized upon his meeting of Estella, the love of his life. Pip changes from an innocent, sensitive and common young boy to a selfish, rejecting adolescent. He is led into making grave mistakes based on his false expectations of marrying Estella and being a gentleman. In the ... and is intimidated by her upon meeting. He observes her to be haughty, contemptuous and cold-hearted, yet beautiful. She constantly refers to him as "boy" which emphasizes Pip's inferiority to Estella. Estella instills in Pip a shame of himself and his commonness. During Pip's firs...

• Word Count: 2287
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

... novel, a selfish, egotistic, miserly, stingy, voracious, greedy, tight fisted, cold hearted, reclusive, bitter, callous, harsh, heartless, unfeeling, cruel man who cares only about making money. "A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" He thinks of Christmas as a "humbug", "Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas ... ! One Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy!", Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy". Scrooge speaks very enthusiastically, on a topic that he wouldn't h...

• Word Count: 5644
• Approx Pages: 23
• Grade Level: High School

... 's sincere care for Pip. Joe began McLean 2 teaching Pip that friendship is much more important than one's wealth and social standing. He repeatedly tells Pip that having someone who cares about you is far more important than a higher social standing. Later on into the novel, Pip's wealth grows as his benefactor supplies him with money. As his wealth grows, Pip begins ... to look down upon and almost forget about Joe and their friendship. Even though very disappointed at the time, Joe still greatly values their friendship. Joe shows his everlasting care for Pip when Pip grows very ill an...

• Word Count: 1218
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Great Expectations The plot of Great Expectations revolves around Pip as a young boy and his chance encounter on the Kent marshes with an escaped convict, Magwitch. It follows Pip's journey through to adulthood and gives insight into the attitudes about the social conditions and snobbery at the time when Dickens was writing and ... that he doesn't want Magwitch in his house. This affects the man and Pip tries to smooth things over and makes polite conversation. Pip remembers about the £2 that he was given as a child and he tries to pay him off by giving him two clean pound notes, but straight...

• Word Count: 948
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Oliver is a young boy born into poverty. He begins his life an orphan taken in by a workhouse. Oliver is poorly treated and very much neglected throughout the first nine years of his life. He ... the best solution for him is to run away to London. Upon his arrival severely exhausted from the trek, he falls asleep in front of a shop for a long time. A young boy finds him intriguing and takes him to the home of a man who goes by the name Fagin. Fagin is a generous man who is anonymous for being a thief. He teaches Oliver ... ill-like appearance. Oliver is looked after and nurtured back to healt...

• Word Count: 1222
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... of good fortune that Pip had family member who was able to give him an apprenticeship position. It's evident that Pip is a very caring and considerate boy, and when he meets Magwitch, an escaped convict hiding in the marshes, he helps him by providing him with food, despite the fact that Magwitch has ... Estella, her adopted daughter. As he and Estella are playing cards, Estella makes mention of his lower class features: "'He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!' said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. 'And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!' I have never tho...

• Word Count: 1549
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... by the fact that he loves someone who doesn't even like him. Characterization Character Description: Pip: At the begginning of the story Pip is a young boy boy with fat cheeks and he is small and weak for his age. This is described in the story when Pip states, " I believe they (his cheeks ... was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong." (Chapter 1, Page 2) He was an innocent, polite and caring boy but then changed into a snob who forgot about his old friends. Throughout the whole story his personality color was gold. His caring personality comes out in the end of the stor...

• Word Count: 2590
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

... childhood up until he gets to London and meets new friends, but also meets new enemies. At London, he finds his only family members and he learns about his past. This book is a mystery and adventure story. THE PLOT: OPENING SITUATION, PROBLEM, & RESOLUTION The opening situation of the book starts off with ... a lady running away and coming across a small cottage. The lady laid a baby boy, but she dies because she was ill. The boy is named by Mr. Bumble, who owns an orphanage. Mr. Bumble names him Oliver Twist. Oliver had to move to another house because ... being. Mr. Brownlow plays the...

• Word Count: 1261
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School