... loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip learning this lesson, largely by exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvement. Ambition and self-improvement take two forms in Great Expectations "moral and social; these motivate Pip ... Through her connection with the Rivers, she acquires the status of belonging to a long-established county family, and she reinforces this upward move by marrying into the landed gentry. As Jane meets with new experiences, solves complex problems and emotional tangles, and...

• Word Count: 1152
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... around him; "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, covetous old sinner, hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire." He refuses to donate money to help people who are "badly off," insisting that "if they would rather die" than go to the cruelly ... he is doomed in death to "witness what [he] cannot share, but might have shared and turned to happiness," weighed down by a "ponderous chain of "cash boxes [and] padlocks" that he'd "forged in [his] life." Marley states that "mankind was [his] business charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence...," a...

• Word Count: 1006
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate