‘The Great Expectations’ is an interesting story written by Charles Dickens. In this story, Dickens proposes many issues that covered society and class, dreams, hopes, wealth, friendship, love and time as well as criminality and innocence. The main character in the story is Pip (an orphan boy adopted by a blacksmith’s family, who has good luck and great expectations, and then loses both his luck and his expectations).
Throughout the story, the life of Pip goes through three main stages.
Ambition and Self-Improvement
The first stage presents Pip as an orphan being raised by an unkind sister who resents him, and her husband, who offers him kindness and love. While visiting the tombstones of his parents in the cemetery, Pip encounters a convict and is made to bring him food and a file the next day. Pip’s convict and a second convict are caught by soldiers of the Crown and returned to the prison ships (the Hulks).
Uncle Pumblechook arranges for Pip to go to Miss Havisham’s house to play, and there he meets and falls in love with Estella. Pip returns to Miss Havisham’s house to walk her around the decayed banquet table every other day for nearly 10 months. Miss Havisham rewards Pip for his service by paying for his apprenticeship to become a blacksmith with Joe.
Pip is unhappy with his position and longs to become a gentleman in order that he might eventually win Estella’s affection. One day a lawyer, Mr Jaggers, comes to tell Pip that a beneficiary has left him great fortunes. Pip is to go to London to become a gentleman. Pip believes that the benefactor is Miss Havisham.
Crime, guilt and innocence
The second stage of Pip’s life takes place in London (after he became rich) where he becomes friends with Herbert Pocket. The two young men live lavish life and beyond their means and fall deeply in debt. Pip makes friends with Mr Jaggers’ clerk, Mr Wemmick, and enjoys visiting him at his Castle. Pip is told the background of Miss Havisham and her ill-fated wedding day. He also is embarrassed by a visit from Joe. An unexpected visit from his convict reveals that the convict, not Miss Havisham, is his benefactor. The man’s name is Magwitch; he is the one to whom Pip had brought food in the churchyard. This knowledge begins the change in Pip from ungrateful snobbery to the humility associated with Joe and home.
After a storm comes sunshine
The third stage in Pip’s life solves all the remaining mysteries of the novel. Compeyson, the second convict who was Magwitch’s enemy, is drowned when Pip tries to aid Magwitch in his escape from London. Pip finds out who Estella’s mother and father are. Pip is rescued from Orlick. Magwitch dies in prison, and Pip becomes a clerk in Cairo with Herbert. He returns 11 years later and finds Estella at the site of Satis House. Pip returns from his work overseas. He visits Joe and Biddy and meets their son, a little Pip, sitting by the fire with Joe just as Pip himself did years ago. Pip tells Biddy that he is quite the settled old bachelor, living with Clara and Herbert and he thinks he will never marry. Nevertheless, he goes to the Satis House that night to think once again of the girl who got away. Moreover, there he meets Estella. Drummle treated her roughly and recently died. She tells Pip that she has learned the feeling of heartbreak the hard way and now seeks his forgiveness for what she did to him. The two walk out of the garden hand in hand, and Pip “saw the shadow of no parting from her”.
