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Great Expectations
One type of irony is when event turns out the opposite of what one expects. Pip learns he has "great expectations" when an anonymous benefactor provides the money so that he can be established as a...
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Great Expectations
Pip can be forgiven for wanting so much more out of life than he currently has. A poor, young orphan living in a humble blacksmith’s cottage on the bleak Romney Marshes with his nasty sister and...
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Great Expectations
A succinct statement of the novel’s central theme is "be yourself." Charles Dickens demonstrate how important it is to be authentic and maintain one’s integrity. The protagonist, Pip, is a child...
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Great Expectations
A bildungsroman is often called a coming-of-age novel because it is usually a story about the mental and moral growth of a young person into adulthood. Great Expectations is definitely a...
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Great Expectations
The opening pages of Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations are significant in a number of ways, including the following: The very first paragraph introduces Pip, the narrator of this...
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Great Expectations
The importance of reality as opposed to mere appearance is arguably the most significant theme in Great Expectations. Most of the characters on display are not quite what they seem, their true...
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Great Expectations
Magwitch is important to the plot of Great Expectations. He is an escaping convict who meets up with Pip in the lonely fens as the novel opens and frightens Pip into bringing him food and a file....
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Great Expectations
Pip had returned to the forge with the intention of asking Biddy to marry him, but when he finds Biddy has just married Joe, he has to change his plans. At the links referenced below - especially...
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Great Expectations
In Great Expectations, Mr. Wopsle plays Hamlet in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Chapter 31 of the book details Wopsle's ridiculous portrayal of Hamlet. His acting is terrible and awkward. This is perhaps a...
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Great Expectations
Through hearing different pieces Magwitch, Molly, and Estella's stories, Pip is able to piece together that Magwitch is Estella's father, and that Molly is Estella's mother. Pip is very confident...
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Great Expectations
Pip is afraid Estella will see him at the forge, all dirty and disgusting. He sees her face in the flames of the fire.
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Great Expectations
The lesson of Great Expectations is that kindness is the highest virtue. People show they are true ladies or gentlemen to the extent they exhibit kindness and mercy. Joe and Biddy are the great...
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Great Expectations
Herbert Pocket is the son of Matthew Pocket, who is the cousin of Miss Havisham. Perhaps exclusively, the Pocket family does not seem to lust after Miss Havisham's fortune. Herbert puts a great...
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Great Expectations
Mr. Jagger, a lawyer, brings with him the news that Pip has great expectations. As he explains to Pip and Joe—as he joins them in their parlor lit with only one candle—a secret benefactor is giving...
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Great Expectations
Pip is totally racked by guilt not so much for his theft of the items from his sister's larder but for failing to confess the whole truth to his trusted friend (and brother-in-law) Joe Gargery. Pip...
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Great Expectations
To answer this question, take a look at chapter 8, where Pip and Estella meet for the first time. The location of this meeting is Satis House, the home of Miss Havisham, which she shares with...
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Great Expectations
Mrs. Joe is Pip's older sister, who raised her infant brother after the death of their parents. Mrs. Joe is portrayed as an abusive woman who brings Pip up "by the hand," meaning that she beats him...
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Great Expectations
The reader has a distinct advantage in hearing from the older, experienced Pip. We can learn not only about the adventures of the boy and youth, but get the satisfaction of knowing that things...
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Great Expectations
Once Pip receives his fortune, he immediately begins to spend money lavishly with his friend, Herbert Pocket. Pip becomes a spendthrift in order to keep up with appearances and proceeds to purchase...
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Great Expectations
A highly nervous Pip is met at the gates of Satis House, Miss Havisham's crumbling residence, by Estella. Pip is immediately struck by the young lady's extraordinary beauty. However, he also...
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Great Expectations
Pip is a young orphaned boy as the story opens. His actual name is Philip Pirrip. Since that name was too difficult for him to pronounce when he was very young, he took on the nickname Pip. As the...
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Great Expectations
Pumblechook is Joe's uncle. He is a seedman, which means he sells seeds. He is also a tenant of Miss Havisham's, and he goes every so often to her home, Satis House, to pay the rent. On one cold...
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Great Expectations
Ambition is a very important theme in Great Expectations and provides the chief motivation behind many of the characters' actions. Pip is a good example of this. He doesn't want to spend the rest...
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Great Expectations
Much of Great Expectations is about Pip's journey to moral and psychological maturity. Pip reaches maturity through adversity and, as many adolescents do, through realizing and accepting that the...
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Great Expectations
One thing to keep in mind is that Pip is narrating this story as an older man, and he is telling readers about his earlier life. This essentially makes Pip two different people. One person is Pip...
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Great Expectations
The answer to this question is "Yes, but..." with the "but" being an essential element of the novel. In chapter 18 of Great Expectations, Mr. Jaggers tells Pip that he will come into a handsome...
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Great Expectations
In Great Expectations, Startop is a friend to the protagonist, Pip. He helps Pip at several key moments in the story. Together with another of Pip's friends, Herbert, he saves Pip after Pip's fight...
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Great Expectations
Great Expectations is the story of what happens to Pip as he comes into money that a mysterious benefactor leaves him. It is also the story of how he changes. At first, Pip is embarrassed by Joe,...
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Great Expectations
Pip is brought up in humble circumstances. He is orphaned and so is raised in the household of his much older sister, called Mrs. Joe, and her husband, the kind-hearted Joe, a simple blacksmith....
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Great Expectations
Pip starts out life as a humble boy, an orphan who lives with his much older sister and her husband, the blacksmith Joe. As a child, Pip has no aspirations to become a gentleman: the best he can...
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Great Expectations
Charles Dickens’s novel has numerous Gothic elements. There is a dark, foreboding tone in many parts, and the sinister atmosphere—especially in the watery locales—contribute to the somber aura. But...
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Great Expectations
In the opening chapter of the story, the reader is introduced to Pip, who describes his earliest clear memory at the churchyard when he was visiting his parents' graves. While Pip is in the...
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Great Expectations
Pip, the story's protagonist, lives with his sister and her husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery, in a little cottage on the Romney Marshes in the county of Kent. Kent is known as "The Garden of...
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Great Expectations
You are asking about the end of Great Expectations, where Estella and Pip reunite at Satis House after the events of the story are over. Throughout, Dickens has used a lot of symbolism in such...
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Great Expectations
Magwitch is Estella's father, a fact unknown to both of them. Before his imprisonment, Magwitch was in a relationship with a woman named Molly. She was his common law wife. The two had Estella...
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Great Expectations
Poor young Pip finds it hard to sleep at night, and there are two reasons for this, depending on which part of the story we're dealing with. First of all, Pip is kept awake by the thought of Abel...
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Great Expectations
Pip is ashamed of himself when he discovers Joe at his bedside because he had resented Joe’s visit to London. Pip was raised by his older sister and her husband, Joe. His older sister was a...
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Great Expectations
As the novel opens, Pip describes the English fens near his house. This is a wet, marshy, lowland terrain close to the sea. It is a mysterious, dark, and foreboding place. Beyond the graveyard Pip...
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Great Expectations
Pip, a poor boy with few aspirations beyond becoming a village blacksmith like his older sister's husband, Joe, suddenly discovers he has a secret benefactor. Someone wealthy is financing him to...
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Great Expectations
Dickens uses the hand motif throughout Great Expectations as a way of indicating character. We're told, for instance, that Pip has been brought up "by hand," by a sister with a "hard and heavy...
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Great Expectations
The stranger in question is the former escaped convict Abel Magwitch in disguise. He's rocked up at the local tavern in search of young Pip, on whom he will eventually settle a large portion of his...
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Great Expectations
It's not Pip who says he wants to become a frog or an eel, but Abel Magwitch. He says it right after a frightened Pip bids him goodnight in the churchyard where they first meet. The escaped convict...
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Great Expectations
In the opening chapter of Dickens's classic novel Great Expectations, Pip is visiting his parents' grave in a marshy area near his house when he meets a terrifying escaped convict wearing heavy...
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Great Expectations
The trial goes very quickly. Jaggers tries, at first, to get the trial postponed in the hopes that the very sick Magwitch will die before a guilty verdict can be passed. However, that motion is...
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Great Expectations
In this particular excerpt, Pip is ruefully reflecting on the fact that his experiences of playing for Miss Havisham at Satis House have turned him into an almighty snob. Once upon a time, he...
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Great Expectations
There is very little difference between an Entwicklungsroman and a Bildungsroman. Critics are divided on whether the former is a sub-genre of the latter, or whether they are two similar types of...
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Great Expectations
Great Expectations and Jane Eyre are alike in that both protagonists begin with low expectations of what their lives will be. Both are dependent orphans with no money. Pip is treated harshly by...
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Great Expectations
Great Expectations is not only a Bildungsroman itself, but offers an exploration of the ideas of development behind the genre. A Bildungsroman is a novel about education, psychological development,...
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Great Expectations
Pip is horrified when Magwitch shows up in chapter 39. He is shocked and upset, first, that he owes his wealth to a man he regards as a criminal lowlife. (We might feel the same if we found our...
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Great Expectations
In Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, money provides opportunities for some while its absence prevents others from fulfilling their potentials. Certainly, with the "toadies" who hover about...
