Charles Dickens

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Biography

Charles John Huffam Dickens, born February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, son of John and Elizabeth Dickens.
He was sent to work in the Warrens Blacking Factory at the age of twelve after his father was arrested for debt. He worked 10 hours a day . His horrific experience during this time, although only a few months, forever changed his views, and set his writing style.

He writes of the life of individuals, often children, who are poor and mistreated by someone of authority or wealth. However, these individuals go on to live a much happier existence, while the individuals who hurt them typically meet a less appealing fate. He is depicted as the greatest English novelist, and is considered second only to Shakespeare among all English writers.

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By the time he wrote Great Expectations, Dickens was separated from his wife and was involved in an affair with a young actress. His editor convinced Dickens to change his novel's conclusion to the sunnier one which now remains.. Shaw said of the book, "Its beginning is unhappy; its middle is unhappy; and the conventional happy ending is an outrage on it." Dickens died in 1870, and was laid under a tombstone that read: "England's Most Popular Author." It is said, that his very last words were, Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all of the rules of art.

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Dickens wrote fifteen novels, most of which were over a thousand pages, in addition to countless novellas, stories, articles, sketches and letters Oliver Twist (1838), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), David Copperfield (1849), Hard Times (1854), the ever-popular story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, "A Christmas Carol" (1943), Great Expectations (1860)

Great Expectations
(1861)

Is it childish to dream about a future completely different from what you expect to happen?

Written in first person

Story follows the life of an orphan named Philip Pirrip, nicknamed Pip

The beginning; First plot On Christmas Eve, Pip encounters a frightening convict in the village churchyard.He scares Pip into stealing him some food This incident is crucial: it gives Pip, who must steal the goods from his sister's house, his first taste of true guilt, and, secondly, Pip's kindness warms the convict's heart. The convict, however, waits many years to truly show his gratitude.

He lives with his sister Mrs. Joe who beats him around and with her husband Mr Joe ,a kind blacksmith
Second Plot

Pip gets invited unexpectedly to the house of a rich old woman in the village named Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham is mean and creepy as she is wearing a yellowish wedding dress and has an adopted daughter Estella with whom he immediately falls in love with
Having tasted the spoils of a better life,another crucial change: Pip is miserable as a blacksmith and has decided now on wantinh to achieve greatness having great expectations

Third plot Pip is going to London to become a gentleman being given a lot of money from an unknown benefactor

Forth plot : Returning of the convict

The story ending :

"I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her

Characters
Main characters: Philip Pirrip, nicknamed Pip

Others: Mr Jagers Orlick

Miss Havisham
Mr and Mrs. Joe Gargery Esella

Bentley Drummle Molly

Herbert Pocket
The convict(Magwitch, or Provis ) Biddy

Pip "I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the arguments of my best friends." Chapter 4, pg. 25 Estella:'I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me." Chapter 38, pg. 356

Places and objects

The Temple

London

The Blue Boar

Vocabulary
Marshes: 'A most beastly place: mudbank, mist, swamp, and work' Wittles: I shell steal some wittles

Disquiet

In vain should I attempt to describe the disquiet of Herbert

Muzzled: You two may count upon me always having a genteel muzzle on, muzzled I ever will be

Patronage:
By proceeding to take me into custody with a right of patronage

To disclose: When that person discloses, yu and that person will setlle your affairs

Bewildered : Bewildered by the suprise and yet conscious

About the book

The title
The title Great Expectations refers to the 'Great Expectations' Pip has of coming into his benefactor's property upon his disclosure to him and achieving his intended role as a gentleman at that time. Great Expectations is a novel which describes growth and personal development, in this case, of Pip.

Style
Great Expectations is written in first person and uses language and grammar that has fallen out of common use since its publication. Dickens loves detail, and he loves spinning elegant language, and sometimes those two loves meet to create new worlds within his overarching story. Stories within stories are found everywhere in Great Expectations.

On Dickens Style
Despite the great length of his major novels, Dickens deserves to be read slowly, with occasional pauses to reread a choice passage, because he is one of the most inventive and vigorous stylists in the whole range of English literature. Style, as we know, has many facets, and Dickens powerful rhythms, his supple patterns of alliteration, the hammer-blows of the anaphoric insistence he often favors, are all worthy of attention. But he is above all the great master of figurative language in English after Shakespeare. Robert Alter, John Hopkins U.

Point of View
The first-person narrator of Dickens' Great Expectations is an adult Pip who tells the story in his own voice and from his own memory. What is distinctive about that voice is that it can so intimately recall the many small details of a little boy's fear and misery, as well as the voices and dialects of othersfrom the rough country speech of Magwitch and Orlick to the deaf Aged Parent's loud repetitions or the mechanically predictable things Jaggers says. Yet other details seem to be forgotten. Pip tells almost nothing of his beatings from...

Problems
SOCIAL CLASS , CRIME , AMBITION, LOVE ,INJUSTICE, WELTH, Expectation,Identity ,Hypocrites

Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectationsmoral, social, and educational; these motivate Pips best and his worst behavior throughout the novel

Moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class.

Favorite Quotes
"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before-more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle." Chapter 19, pg. 185 "... it felt very sorrowful and strange that this first night of my bright fortunes should be the loneliest I had ever known." Chapter 18, pg. 169

"If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked." Chapter 9, p. 81

By:

Emili Dobutovi; Julijana Krajnovi 4.a