Great Expectations Critical Essays - eNotes.com.
Great expectations, is a Victorian Bildungsroman centred of the self development of a protagonist named Pip. Pip is a young boy with a great expectation to elevate himself from his low class society and become educated as a gentleman. Pip's great expectations are accompanied by him acquiring new character traits such as selfishness, snobbery.The most important lesson Pip learns in the novel—and perhaps the most important theme in Great Expectations—is that no external standard of value can replace the judgments of one’s own conscience. Characters such as Joe and Biddy know this instinctively; for Pip, it is a long, hard lesson, the learning of which makes up much of the book.This essay will examine the fact that the novel “great Expectations’ is the story where Pip found his own identity. Pip, throughout his life was enraged by the behavior of Mrs. Joe, by snobbishness of Estella which ultimately came to his realization to reform himself into a stronger man. He realized that the position he was in being in his.
His road back to grace starts when Magwitch reveals himself as the source of Pip's rise in social stature. The irony that the source of his gentility is from a creature more socially detestable than the uneducated Joe is not lost on Pip. It is the slap in the face that brings Pip out of the fantasy world he has been living in. His dream has.We hate to break it to you, Shmoopers, but for most of us, that's what growing up means: realizing that our great expectations aren't going to come true, and that, instead of becoming rock stars or presidents, we'll spend most of our lives working hard for a sufficient living—just like Pip.
Great Expectations is a portrait gallery of many characters. These characters are interwoven throughout the novel in a masterful way. Write an essay illustrating how suspense and coincidence help.
