What are the main themes of great expectations?
- Ambition and Self-Improvement. The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class. ...
- Social Class. ...
- Crime, Guilt, and Innocence. ...
- Sophistication. ...
- Education. ...
- Family.
Charles Dickens's Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, an English orphan who rises to wealth, deserts his true friends, and becomes humbled by his own arrogance. It also introduces one of the more colorful characters in literature: Miss Havisham.
During the course of the novel, Pip comes to realize that his “great expectations”—social standing and wealth—are less important than loyalty and compassion. Great Expectations was also noted for its blend of humour, mystery, and tragedy.
Chapter 9 describes Pip's return home after his first visit to Miss Havisham. At first Pip is reluctant to share details, but when his sister and Mr. Pumblechook press him, he ends up telling elaborate lies about his experience. Later, watching his sister tell Joe these same lies, Pip is overcome by guilt.
8 Expectations for Living
We will value one another as unique and special individuals. We will not laugh at or make fun of a person's mistakes nor use sarcasm or putdowns. We will use good manners, saying “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me” and allow others to go first. We will cheer each other to success.
Keys. Keys are important symbols in Great Expectations because keys can represent accessibility or inaccessibility. In the case of the novel, women always seem to have the keys, and Pip must wait on them to unlock gates.
Throughout the story, the life of Pip goes through three main stages.
Though Estella marries Drummle in the novel and several adaptations, she does not marry him in the best-known 1946 film adaptation. In no version does she eventually marry Pip, at least not within the timespan of the story.
As the novel begins, he is an innocent young boy who does not mind his low rank in society. At around the age of eight, he meets a beautiful but proud girl named Estella who is of the upper class. Pip falls in love with her and becomes very ashamed of his humble background and his coarse-seeming relatives.
In Chapter 10 of Great Expectations Pip, who decides he no longer wants to be common, tries to work on improving his class status by attending extra lessons with Biddy. After his extra class, he walks to the local bar to meet Joe. There, he finds Joe drinking with a stranger who stares at him all night.
What happens in chapter 7 of Great Expectations?
Chapter Seven includes a letter that Pip writes to Joe. It is poorly spelled, and Pip substitutes letters with numbers. Nonetheless, Joe expresses great pleasure when he receives it. Pip knows that Joe can't read, and Joe explains that he never went to school because his father was an abusive alcoholic.
In Chapter 15 of Great Expectations, Pip tries to teach Joe how to read because he wants to make him more acceptable in Estella's society. He's also longing to see Estella again and he convinces Joe to let him have a half-holiday in order to go see Miss Havisham.
Pip first sees Miss Havisham and describes her as the 'strangest lady he had ever seen'. She is dressed all in white. Pip realizes that she is dressed as a bride.
Dickens wrote two endings for the novel. In the first, Estella remarries and Pip remains single. In the second, Dickens suggests that the two will marry.
- We will value one another as unique and special individuals.
- We will not laugh at or make fun of a person's mistakes nor use sarcasm or putdowns.
- We will use good manners and allow others to go first.
- We will cheer each other to success.
- We will help one another whenever possible.
Miss Havisham represents revenge and disappointment. After her fiance leaves her at the altar, she becomes a living ghost, dressed in her wedding gown and surrounded by the preserved scene of what was supposed to be a happy day.
Satis House is a symbol of frustrated expectations. The word "satis" comes from the Latin word for "enough," and the house must have been given its name as a blessing or as a premonition that its residents would be satisfied with the lives they led between its walls.
In stories, movies, and TV shows, they often represent hidden truths, confusion, and even danger. Sometimes, fog and mist are used to indicate that a character is in a dream or experiencing something that isn't real.
It takes an average reader about 6 hours and 22 minutes to read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, according to a new site called Howlongtoreadthis.com. The site lets you enter a book title (and even choose the edition of the publication) to determine how many words and pages are in the book.
Interest Level | Grade 5 - Grade 12 |
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Reading Level | Grade 9 |
Genre | Young Adult |
Publisher | Lerner Publishing Group |
Brand | First Avenue Classics ™ |
Does Pip marry in Great Expectations?
Pip ignores her affections for him as he pursues Estella. Recovering from his own illness after the failed attempt to get Magwitch out of England, Pip returns to claim Biddy as his bride, arriving in the village just after she marries Joe Gargery. Biddy and Joe later have two children, one named after Pip.
Before leaving, he does Pip one last good turn, paying off all of Pip's debts. Pip rushes home to reconcile with Joe and decides to marry Biddy when he gets there.
Then Pip professes his undying love for Joe and Biddy and he blesses their marriage.
THE TWO ENDINGS
Dickens then wrote a more conventional ending, which suggests that Pip and Estella will marry.
Estella's meanness to Pip is the trigger for him to change from a pleasant boy into a snob who criticises himself, she is the trigger for Pip to stop being a good person. This change in Pip' s personality continues at their next meeting when Pip fights a boy outside Satis House and catches Estella watching.
Herbert is very generous and welcoming towards Pip. Herbert wants to give Pip a nickname to show their affection for one another. He dislikes Philip (Pip's real name) as it sounds stuffy. He settles on Handel because the composer wrote a piece titled after blacksmiths (Pip's trade).
As an infant, Philip Pirrip was unable to pronounce either his first name or his last; doing his best, he called himself “Pip,” and the name stuck.
In Chapter 12 of Great Expectations Pip summarizes about a year of events. He worries at first about the fight he had with a pale young gentleman, but nothing comes of it. Estella continues to mistreat Pip, and Mrs. Havisham continues to takes delight in Estella's cruelty towards Pip.
Magwitch was put on a prison ship near the marshes of Pip's hometown. While on the ship, he saw Compeyson and attacked him. He was forced into solitary confinement in the "black hole" of the ship, but ended up escaping and swimming to shore where he hid among the graves and where he found Pip.
Pip soon figures out that the Pocket household is run by its servants; namely Flopson and Millers. The servants wear the pants. They have parties and get drunk in the kitchen, they forget to take care of the baby, they order Mrs. Pocket around.
What happens in chapter 5 of Great Expectations?
Chapter 5 concludes the story of the convict. After Joe repairs the cuffs, Joe and Pip go with the soldiers to look for the convicts. They find the convicts, and as they are being captured Pip's convict protects Pip from punishment by claiming he stole the food and file.
Pip has the desire, because of his love for Joe, to tell him the truth about who took the stolen pie. However, he fears Joe will think the worse of him, and that it will damage their friendship. Eventually, he realizes he is a coward.
At the beginning of C6 Pip feels bad because he lied to Joe. Pip doesn't feel ashamed for stealing Mrs Joe's food because he doesn't love her. However, he loves Joe and so the lies make him feel bad.
Pip is immature, kind, and ambitious throughout parts of Great Expectations. After Pip is orphaned as a child, he grows up with his sister and her husband. Pip never feels comfortable with himself and when he mingles among the wealthy, he decides that a life of privilege would be more beneficial to him.
His longing to marry Estella and join the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear of being punished for bad behavior: once he understands ideas like poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor, ignorant, or immoral.
The two conditions to his expectations are that he must keep the name of Pip and not ask the name of his benefactor. That person will step forward when the time is right. Jaggers mentions that Pip should study with someone to learn to be a gentleman and mentions Matthew Pocket, a relative of Miss Havisham's.
In the first sentence of Great Expectations, Pip explains the origin of his name: “My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.