Great Expectations

Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations is an outstanding, classic, fictional novel which recounts the narrative of Philip Pirrip, a young boy who over the course of the novel transforms into a gentleman with the help of a secret benefactor, while struggling through battles of his morality and love on the way. Great Expectations is a prime example for an excellent novel; the novel contains suspense, love, mystery, and excellent diction, in addition it conveys a lesson relevant to mid-nineteenth century England and even modern day. First of all, this book is hard to put down, due to the fact that Dicken’s has a great ability to weave in imagery throughout the novel to illustrate a descriptive image in one’s mind of characters and setting. I agree with the July 20, 1861 edition of the Spectator: Dicken’s ability to portray the essence of human character in the poor characters is far surpassed in excellence than his ability to portray the wealthy in his novel. I believe that this is due to the fact that Charles Dickens was raised in indigence, and can therefore convey his life experiences of poverty to his fictional characters’ lives. Also, the untruth and improbability in all the incidents and characters obliterates the novel to some extent. Although there are a number of flaws in the novel, the lesson extracted from this novel is incredibly ethical; although there were prejudgments in nineteenth century England (and even today): the poor are immoral, uneducated people, Dickens, through his principled characters, exemplifies that wealth does not constitute moral standing. In addition, Pip’s struggle to win over Estella’s love, throughout the novel, leaves the reader captivated to Dicken’s work of fiction out of curiosity. Finally, as a result of the ambiguity at the novel’s end, Dickens allows the reader to ponder numerous questions, leaving the reader in a state of suspense and mystery. Even though there are some flaws in this book, Charles Dicken’s novel sill defines a great work of English literature. The figurative language and moral lessons which are intertwined together to form Great Expectation, makes this novel superior and worth while to read.

I thought that this book was hard to get into, and was not very good. If I was not forced to read it by my English teacher, I most definately would not have read it.

I belive that this book is one of the best books that I have ever read. This book is very suspenseful and you won't want to put it down till you are finished it. I would recommend it to anyone who loves great literature