Nov 16, 2009

Great Expectations | Overview

Great Expectations, many readers' favorite Dickens novel, is immensely popular for its self-portrait of the author and for the warmth, feeling, and reality that it imparts to what is essential in human experience. Because of the deep impressions his own childhood made on him, Dickens is a novelist of childhood. He presents children, especially Pip, with sympathy and understanding, creating a sensitive orphan boy with whom every reader can identify. The other characters of the story are also fascinating: the half-demented old Miss Havisham; Estella, her haughty adopted daughter;...