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Charles Dickens- Great Expectations

            Great Expectations was written by Charles Dickens around the time of 1860-1861 and was initially written as a periodical for a newspaper. The story centres around Pip, who is the main character of the book, and is written in the style of first person narrative. The book is written from the viewpoint of the older Pip as he 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 doing this he denied his origins and the people who helped him and loved him. He became arrogant and patronizing and mistreated those he should have valued. Through this process Pip becomes lonely and corrupted. The irony of the story is that the very ones who he had looked upon as being far too inferior of him were the ones who had cared for him the most - Joe Gargery and the convict Magwitch. The realisation that Pip came to from his experiences were that the status and class he had strived for and admired were in fact full of corruption. He goes on to realise that the things and people he had grown to believe were inferior to him were in fact more than his equal. He is filled with remorse by the end of the book and a desire to put right the wrongs he has done to people.
             In the first chapter Pip is seven years old and the style of this chapter is very much written as from the viewpoint of a small child and how things appeared to him at that age. Dickens commences the book with these few lines:.
             'My father's name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip".
             In these opening lines Dickens uses humour to express how Pip first came to call himself Pip.


Essays Related to Charles Dickens- Great Expectations

1. Charles Dickens

... later in his life would turn out to be some of his best. Some of Charles Dickens' bests include A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. A Christmas Carol takes place in 19th century England and it shows how Dickens hated greed. Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy workaholic, is visited by three ghosts, and learns the error of his ways by becoming a warm, caring man. A Tale ... a fatal stroke on June 9, 1870, and was buried in Westminster Abbey five days later. Charles Dickens was the greatest and most popular English Author of his time. He introduced a new way of writing...

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2. Great Expectations/Oliver Twi

... of the same qualities is because they both reflect painful experiences which occurred in Dickens' past. During his childhood, Charles Dickens suffered much abuse from his parents, and this abuse is often expressed in his novels (Marcus 82). Pip, in Great Expectations, talked often about the abuse he received at the hands of his sister, ... Works Cited Carey, John. Here Comes Dickens - The Imagination of a Novelist. New York: Schocken Books, 1974. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: The Heritage Club, 1939. Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 19...

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4. Great Expectations

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... when Pip's dreams with Estella come true. Pip says: "I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place... I saw no shadow of another parting from her" (Dickens, Great Expectations 493). This theme is apparent here for a few reasons. The first being that the reoccurring element, the shadows of guilt are gone. Secondly, Pip is now walking away with his ... the end, he also disguises it so that it may not be bluntly stated. After this Author project is over, I would like to pursue other novels by Charles Dickens, but not on an academic level. Charles Dickens' novels are not mean...

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6. About Dickens & his "Great Experience"

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8. Great expectations

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9. Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens's works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy. Charles was born at Landport, in Portsea, England, February 7, 1812, He was the second of eight children. Dickens's father was employed as a minor civil servant in the Naval Pay Office, a job that required the family to move a number of times ... arose above them, or kept apart from them, observed them, and became their describer. A new period soon commenced in the life of Charles. His father's affairs impro...

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10. Charles Dickens

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