1. What significance does the novel’s title, Great Expectations, have for the story? In what ways does Pip have “great expectations”?
2. For much of Great Expectations, Pip seems to believe in a stark division between good and evil, and he tends to classify people and situations as belonging to one extreme or the other: for instance, despite their respective complexities, he believes that Estella is good and the convict is evil. Yet, both socially and morally, Pip himself is often caught between extremes; his own situation rarely matches up to his moral vision. What is the role of moral extremes in this novel? What does it mean to be ambiguous or caught between extremes?
For much of Great Expectations, Pip seems to believe in a stark division between good and evil, and he tends to classify people and situations as belonging to one extreme or the other: for instance, despite their respective complexities, he believes that Estella is good and the convict is evil. Yet, both socially and morally, Pip himself is often caught between extremes; his own situation rarely matches up to his moral vision. What is the role of moral extremes in this novel? What does it mean to be ambiguous or caught between extremes?
his great expectation to raise his status and improve himself.
Pip expects himself to become a gentleman. In doing so, he hopes to be wealthy, scholarly, mannerly, and deserving of Estella's love and admiration.
In another sense, others place great expectations upon Pip. Magwitch sponsors Pip's education in London because he expects Pip to learn to be a better gentleman than Compeyson who was born a gentleman. Likewise, Joe has great expectations for Pip because he tries to raise him to be hard working and kind. Biddy, at first, expects Pip to be able to do great things with his intelligence, until she sees him begin influenced by Miss Havisham and Estella.
Other characters in the book have expectations for Pip, but not necessarily "great" or "good" ones for the innocent protagonist.
1. Pip: In Ch18, Jaggers announces,
`I am instructed to communicate to him,' said Mr Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, `that he will come into a handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman -- in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.'
Pip mistakenly believes that it is Miss Havisham who has decided to transform him into a gentleman so that he will be able to marry Estella (Ch. 38). This is the source of all of Pip's problems and when he realises who his real benefactor is in Ch.39 he is too stunned to react:
I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my life. I stood, with
a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating -- I stood so, looking wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair, when the room began to surge and turn.
The title of Dickens' novel "Great Expectations" is so obviously ironic. Pip's so called 'expectations' are exposed as being so empty and futile when he realizes that its a convict who has been providing for him so that he could pass off superficially as a
'gentleman' and that he has actually been infatuated all these years with a murderess' [Molly] daughter!
This was Dickens' original purpose in writing the novel. In a letter to his official biographer John Forster in October 1860 Dickens remarks about the "tragi-comic conception" of the novel. We are able to readily sympathize with Pip's 'expectations' not being fulfilled because all of us have high hopes and 'great expectations' which are often never fulfilled.
To underscore this general feeling and theme of 'unfulfillment of great expectations' other characters in the novel also have 'great expectations' which are not fulfilled: 1. Miss Havisham has 'great expectations' of marrying Compeyson which are not fulfilled. In her bitterness in Ch. 11 she tells Pip who visits her on her birthday that she 'expects' to die on her birthday and hopes that by doing so an eternal curse will be laid upon Compeyson:
`When the ruin is complete,' said she, with a ghastly look, `and when they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table -- which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him -- so much the better if it is done on this day!'
But these "expectations" of hers are also not fulfilled (Chs. 49, 54).
2. All the relations of Miss Havisham have "great expectations" of receiving a lot of money after her death which as 'expected' are not fulfilled (Ch.57).
3. Similarly in Ch.9 soon after Pip has returned from his first visit to Miss Havisham's house, his sister and Pumblechook have their own 'expectations,' which are never fulfilled:
while they sat debating what results would come to me from Miss Havisham's acquaintance and favour. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would `do something' for me; their doubts related to the form that something would take. My sister stood out for `property.' Mr Pumblechook was in favour of a handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel trade -- say, the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the deepest disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I might only be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the veal-cutlets. `If a fool's head can't express better opinions than that,' said my sister, `and you have got any work to do, you had better go and do it.' So he went.
3) Many of the characters other than Pip have their own expectations as well. Discuss both Herbert Pocket and Pip's expectatons. Compare and contrast.
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Comments from readers:
Herbert's expectations are different to Pips in that he does not raise his expectations, like Pip does. He wants simple things, like for Clara to marry him; a good life; no complications or distractions.
How about the irony of the title?
Who expects what in Great Expectation s? Are the expectations really "great"?
Pip is the main character that has expectations in this novel. After he meets Miss Havisham and Estella, he becomes discontented with his station in life. Estella describes his hands as "rough," and her learning and beauty intimidates him. He realizes, for the first time, that there could be other things out there in the world, and he aspires to them. He is embarassed by his lowly station. He develops expectations in regards to his life; he wants to rise above his circumstances and become a gentleman. The expectations refer to both money, and his station in life. They are tied together, hand-in-hand. His expectations are also tied to Estella herself--he feels that if he can rise to her expectations of what a gentleman should be, then he can have her love. He expects to be with her, to marry her, and to love her. He expects to earn her love in return through raising his own station in life. Pip
feels that if he can't have these things, he can't be happy; happiness is his end goal, and he feels that he knows how to attain it.
Upon the receipt of money, Pip does indeed step into circumstances that allow him to become educated, refined, and a "gentleman." However, he learns that those things that he had been expecting were not that great after all. Having money alienates him from his true friends and family, brings out people who want to take advantage of him, and doesn't, in the end, get him Estella. Pip thought that money could help him to attain his expectations of happiness, but they didn't. If happiness is indeed the end goal, Dickens asserts that money is not the way to get it.
I hope that those thoughts helped; good luck!
At the beginning of the book, Pip does not have many expectations. He expects to be a blacksmith like Joe since that is what is available to him. However, his encounter in the graveyard with the convict changes things. He promises to bring food, a file, etc. and not to tell what he's seen. He keeps his promise, and then suddenly he is told he has a sort of trust fund. This will allow him to go to the city, become educated, work in a business that doesn't leave him covered in ashes and soot, and dress like a gentleman. He is able to live with dignity--even though Joe's tenderness and ability to connect with people prove to be more dignified than what Pip becomes as a man of means.
A "young fellow of great expectations" simply means he has the money to do something more than what was originally planned for him. He has risen a rung or two on the social ladder.
The reason Charles Dickens titled it so was because Pip had had a hard life in so short a lifetime, and when he supposedly came into good fortune, he had high hopes of a better life--an education, a good home, plenty to eat, nice clothes to wear. But the greatest hope of all was the love of Estella, who spurned him constantly. It was always his greatest dream that she could love him and in the end, after much suffering, she final I would say that Pip gets some of his great expectation, but not all of it.
The main part of Pip's great expectation is that he will become a gentleman and a man with money. This part of his expectation comes true as he becomes much more (economically and socially) than he was at the start of the book.
However, Pip does not get this in the way he expects. He gets it because of the help of a convict, not Miss Havisham.
In addition, Pip does not get Estella the way he thinks he will at the beginning of the book. He starts out thinking they will marry, but that does not happen.
ly did.
When they first meet, Estella treats Pip horribly. She makes fun of his appearance, his stature (social status) and how he speaks. She mentions his clothing and his thick-soled shoes. She repeats the phrase "common boy" when referring to him or even speaking directly to him. Then she teases him for calling the Jacks (in a deck of cards) Knaves.
In fact, she seems eager to make him cry. Miss Havisham raised her to be cruel and reject any form of love. She herself was never taught to love or how to feel loved. So her first encounter and many more after that with Pip are all very hard on him. He so badly wants to win her over, only to finally realize that she will never have him.
The moral theme of “Great Expectations” is very basic. It is an old moral theme that has been around as long as man has walked on this earth. Pip, and the reader, learns that affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class. Charles Dickens creates this theme and the novel is
based on Pip learning this very lesson. Pip spends the novel exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvement. Pip is an idealist and if he can think it up, and if it is better than what he has, he wants it. When he first sees Satis House, he decides he wants to be a wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his immorality, he tries to be better; when he realizes that he cannot read, he longs to learn how. Pip's desire for self-improvement creates “great expectations” about his future.
There are many moral lessons in this novel. The main one is that wealth cannot bring happiness. and that appearances can misrepresent reality. When Pip visit the Satis House, everything contradicts what Pip's definition of rich. It is a worn-old house and sunshine never comes in the house. Estella has been raised to led an unhappy life, cruel and incapable of love. In later chapters, Pip will meet a convict, Magwitch. During that time, convicts are regard as being bad. However, Magwith turns out to be a compassionate man who works hard to give "expectations" to Pip in return for his kindness Pip shown when Pip give food to him many years ago.
In Pip, the reader sees several of the themes of the novel: obsession, desire, greed, guilt, ambition, wealth, and good and evil. Pip leaves his state of childish innocence and "grace" and descends into sin on his quest to gain his desires. He wants it all and he wants no costs. Yet Dickens does not make him totally bad, instead leaving the truly good qualities asleep underneath. They surface as his guilt over his snobbery to Joe and Biddy, over dragging Herbert into debt, and about trading Joe for a convict's money. Even during his worst moments, Pip manages to show some good, as, for example, when he sets Herbert up in business. 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 suddenly been seen in the light of day, and now he knows what it has cost him.
Pip, brought up by his sister “by hand”, is a poor but kind o rphan with a sensitive and timid heart of tenderness. One arranged trip to Satis House makes great changes in Pip, which forges the first memorable link on the long chain of his life. Since then, his dignity is tramped and his heart is attracted by Estella, the adopted daughter of Miss Havisham (the owner of Satis house), who is marvelously charming, completely attractive and terribly arrogant. In Pip’s eye, she is well educated and noble, while Pip himself is poor and coarse. Therefore, in Pip’s mind, a g reat expectation to be higher and richer is necessarily needed to stuff the great gap existed there as the stumbling block of his romantic desire and the shameful source of humbleness. By accident, supported by a man unexpected and unknown, he is able to l ive in London as a gentleman. However, all these promising points don’t promise him a fulfillment of his expectation. Finally, waking up from dreams and reality of mistakes, he only finds his burning affections receive nothing but pains, his life in London gives him no more than a habit of squandering money and a lot of debt, and a piece of guilty to Joe for his moral depravation./k expectation as gloomy and frustrating. There are both inner factors and reasons from the outside. This passage will try to discovery them.
Pip’s first trip to Satis House is memorable to him. It leaves many heavy and dark marks in his young soul of nothingness, as well as numerous influences on his life that lasts long and affects him deeply. This trip opens his mind to the knowledge of another living different from his. The former is richness and nobleness; while the latter of his own is poverty and humbleness. He gets a glimpse of the richness beyond poverty, and suffers disdain from the noble. And his actual experience that he, as a symbol of poverty, is terribly trampled by Estella, the emblem of richness, leads him into an unhealthy morality that poverty is a state to be despised and
humbleness is a natural product before richness. Therefore, he falls into Estella’s way of thinking and implants it into his mind. This imparts a fresh belittling opinion (actually one kind of pure prejudice) on what he is and what he has. Just like Estella’s despising words, he also despises himself as a common boy with “coarse hands and thick b oots”, and regards his life as a low—lived, bad way. He “began at heart to hate his trade and to be ashamed of his home”, (P101) and even extends this kind of hate to Mr. Joe (his best companion and supporter) by wondering why
he is not a gentleman.
Basically, it is not his poverty that makes him humble, but his newly developed morality attaches prejudice to poverty. He looks down upon himself because his
mind has been richness-orientated while his body is still in poverty. From then on, He has been in the way that Estella thinks, and tries best to be in the way that Estella lives. From then on, he feels humble, and tries best to displace this feeling of humbleness with another feeling of superiority from richness.
With this imitated way of thinking implanted in mind, Pip, of course, wants to change all of these, to stave off any trace of poverty and to establish himself as a gentleman. Here his hate and belittling himself just due to poverty, as well as his expectation to be out of poverty and into richness avails us of a clear and close look into his inner mind: to be poor is to be humble, while to command money is to command superiority.
Moreover, his rejection of what he is and what he has is also a negation of himself, is also a producer of inferiority and a killer of confidence. Therefore, the more he cares about his poverty and coarseness, the more inferior and less confident he is. That’s why when he stands before Estella, firstly he feels shy and humble, and later is humble enough to fell submissive to her and trembles nervously. The once poverty in body labels poverty in mind for all. And the lack of confidence and the obsession of inferiority lead to the deadly shortage of the key mental support for his expectation. It’s hard to imagine or believe that a heart of weakness can make its expectation fulfilled. In this sense, Pip’s expectation to be higher and richer is also a mental process to make himself more inferior and less confident. On one hand, he shapes a dream to be higher, while on the other, he gradually slips into mental impotence. On one hand, his dream becomes bigger, on the other, his heart gets weaker. Therefore, under these values, his expectation is an external self—improvement, while his feeling inferior is nothing but internal self—destruction. He unconsciously and inevitably sows the seeds of self-destruction at the very beginning of his self-improvement.
In a word, darkness brings people a pair of dark eyes to search for light, while poverty renders Pip a pair of poor eyes to be little himself. Life, besides status, entails so many other aspects. But Pip, just for his poverty, negates what he is and despises what he has completely. He regards poverty as enemy, and at the same time he glorifies the richness, putting them separately o n the two extremes of life’ value, with one in the hell, the other in the heaven. And his soul is just wandering between the hell and the heaven. Virtually, these values to abhor poverty seriously
on one hand and to consecrate richness on the other is a kind of unbalance, is a distortion of reality. And accordingly leads Pip’s mind into a status of unbalance and distortion.
who treats him coldly and contemptuously
tremendous grief and remorse. Several years go by, until one night a familiar figure barges i nto Pip’s room—the convict, Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing that he, not Miss Havisham, is the source of Pip’s fortune. He tells Pip that he was so moved
by Pip’s boyhood kindness that he dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman, and he made a fortune in Australia for that very purpose.
Pip is appalled, but he feels morally bound to help Magwitch escape London, as the convict is pursued both by the police and by Compeyson, his former partner in crime. Pip’s idealism often leads him to perceive the world rather narrowly, and his tendency to oversimplify situations based on superficial values leads him to behave badly toward the people who care about him. When Pip becomes a gentleman, for example, he immediately begins to act as he thinks a gentleman is supposed to act, which leads him to treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly.
On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and sympathetic young man, a fact that can be witnessed in his numerous acts of kindness throughout the book (helping Magw itch, secretly buying Herbert’s way into business, etc.) and his essential love for all those who love him. Pip’s main line of development in the novel may be seen as the process of learning to place his innate sense of kindness and conscience above his immature idealism.
Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectations—moral, social, and educational; these motivate Pip’s best and his worst behavior throughout the novel. First, Pip desires moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard on himself when he acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the future. When he leaves for London, for instance, he torments himself about having behaved so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip desires social self-improvement
Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no more satisfying—and certainly no more moral—than his previous life as a blacksmith’s apprentice.
Throughout the novel, social class provides an arbitrary, external standard of value by which the characters (particularly Pip) judge one another. Because social class is rigid and preexisting, it is an attractive standard for every character who lacks a clear conscience with which to make judgments—Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, for instance. And because high social class is associated with romantic qualities such as luxury and education, it is an immediately attractive standard of value for Pip. After he is elevated to the status of gentleman, though, Pip begins to see social class for what it is: an unjust, capricious standard that is largely incompatible with his own morals. There is simply no reason why Bentley Drummle should be valued above Joe, and Pip senses that fact. 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.。
