... 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

... 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

... 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

... has replaced an external standard of value with an internal value. The character Magwitch is not only powerful in itself but it shows us what Dicken's thought about crime. Dicken's was trying to find the good in even the darkest of characters. In chapter one, Dickens uses metaphors and similes to describe the setting and ... Magwitch is not very well and says to him "I think you have got the ague." And Magwitch agrees with Pip and says "I"m much of your opinion boy." Magwitch shows trust in Pip he asks Pip if he has brought anyone with him and Pip tells him no. Magwitch replies to this ...

• Word Count: 3591
• Approx Pages: 14
• Grade Level: High School

... which is good. The ghost of Christmas past takes Scrooge back to his school days and to the Christmases that he enjoyed when he was a young boy, showing how happy he was. The ghost also reminds him of the day he broke off his engagement with Belle. By using the ghost of ... for Scrooge's warped character (Magill, 949). These ghosts that come to Scrooge are messengers from his unconscious mind. These ghosts enable Scrooge to confront the truth about his own life. A subtle transference takes place. Scrooge shifts from self-pity to compassion and concern for others. He is reborn in love (Ma...

• Word Count: 3019
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

... society as a member of the lower class. The Victorian London of Dickens' was a dirty, corrupt place and a paradise for those who could bend the class system to their will. As a boy, Dickens was of low class. He rose through the class system, not unlike his character, Pip in Great Expectations. Dickens' poor childhood was because of the class system and its ... . Perhaps the most obvious example of the corruptibility of the class system is Pip. In his case, the moral corruption comes about because of the ambitions and struggles in class that the Victorian class is rigid about in definitio...

• Word Count: 2674
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... changes in attitude that this caused. The massively increased availability of newspapers, books, parliamentary reports, scientific studies and the like, brought about by improvements in transport, technology and manufacturing processes meant that there was more information circulating within society than ever before. A documented increase ... of unprecedented material change - steam engines, factories, railroads, urbanization - denoted even greater transformations in the way people thought and acted. Received notions about everything from gender to nationalism, from class to religion, fr...

• Word Count: 4617
• Approx Pages: 18
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... necklace". (BH 457) Her pathetic concern might in some ways be justified as the lower orders in Bleak House can also move up the social ladder. The Ironmaster, who from a boy constructed "steam engines out of saucepans" is also considered to be moving in that "Wat Tyler direction", evoking the leader of the 1381 Peasant's Revolt. (BH 107). Sir Leicester Dedlock ... and a sheer unwillingness to become intergrated. Dicken's stated in his preface that he had "purposefully dwelt upon on the romantic side of familiar things". (BH 7) Yet there is nothing romatic about the spontaneous combusti...

• Word Count: 3779
• Approx Pages: 15
• Has Bibliography

... . Lost, lonely, orphaned, or badly-treated children very often appear in Dicken's novels. The sympathy and compassionate imagination with which Dickens wrote about such children may have come partly from memories of his own unhappiness when he was young. After three months John Dickens was released from prison ... that would launch him on his professional career. He submitted what was called "penny-a-line stuff" to his father's employer, the British Press: information about fires, accidents, or police reports missed by the regular reporters. The time in the lawyers's office ... Dickens l...

• Word Count: 5240
• Approx Pages: 21
• Grade Level: High School

... the emotions, experiences, and thoughts of Pip. This is often haunting, because the reader is given a detailed inside look at the way Pip reacts and feels about his mother's frequent verbal, and to a lesser extent physical abuse. A great deal of the characterisation in the novel is done through imagery. Each character is ... captured several times. While he is living in exile from England in New South Wales, he tries to better himself and build a trust for the boy who helped him. These images of hard work benefiting another are in such great contrast to the images of unfair justice and l...

• Word Count: 2977
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens outlines and follows the life of the young boy Pip who grows up to live the life he has always dreamed of. In describing this story Dickens incorporates a number of themes into ... the chosen theme of a social reformer, but rather as a constant reminder of the shame of his own boyhood and as a symbol of some of his maturest institutions about the nature of human existence." It is said that Dickens wrote articles concerning "Crime and Education" as well as "Crime and Punishment" for the "Daily News" and ... wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered wi...

• Word Count: 4209
• Approx Pages: 17
• Has Bibliography

... is introduced. The first sign that the reader gets of this is the ray of sunlight that shines on her and on a young boy named Bitzer. This ray contrasts the two, making Cecilia more radiant and full of warmth and Bitzer even colder and more transparent. Cecilia ... that information and are doing their best to find everything out. Mrs. Sparsit, Mr. Gradgrind, and James Harthouse are all characters that want information about others, Louisa, and surprisingly Bounderby, are both characters that have something to hide, or at least a "closed off area" in their personalities. ... filling a c...

• Word Count: 2948
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School