Essay on Crime and Imprisonment in Great Expectations

After gaining his wealth, Pip becomes snobby and lets everything go to his head. Now, after losing his wealth, we, as readers see a new change in Pip's personality. As for himself, Pip appears to feel ashamed of himself and his new class. In ​Great Expectations​, explaining Pip's feelings, Pip thinks, "Next day, I had the meanness to feign that I was under a binding promise to go down to Joe; but I was capable of almost any meanness towards Joe or his name." (Dickens, 391) Pips thoughts here, represent how he starts to realize how he has changed since moving to London. In his childhood, Pip was practically best friends with Joe, then becoming a gentleman, he has this sense that he is above Joe and essentially wanted nothing to do with

The first character to play a big part in shaping Pip’s personality is his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery. His sister’s vicious attitude and harsh punishments force Pip to have an unfriendly childhood. This bringing up “by hand” has caused him to be a “sensitive” boy. The constant threat of being beaten with the Tickler has also instilled the fear of speaking out against adult’s treatment of him because it would send his sister into a “terrible Rage.” However, her brutality has also made Pip able to feel when something was a “keen injustice” because he himself feels so about her actions and words towards himself.

1. Why does Pip feel the need to lie about Miss Havisham when he is questioned about her by Mrs. Joe and Mr. Pumblechook? Why is he confident Mr.Pumblechook will not correct his story? Pip feels the need to lie about Miss Havisham because he feels that they won’t believe him and doesn’t want to publicly humiliate her. He is certain Mr. Pumblechook will not correct his story because he does not know her.

Home in today’s society can be described in many ways, but is ultimately expressed as more of a feeling of safety and love. Sonsyrea Tate claims "You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you." In essence, the feeling of home is a part of the character and who he/she will become. In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Pip examines the true meaning of home and how the subjective opinion of home can reflect who a person becomes. He illustrates this idea using recurring appearances of home-like symbols, the way Pip’s definition of home changes throughout the novel, and how he shows Pip’s acquired feelings after moving into higher society.

Pip is an honest boy who can barely live with himself after what he has done, but never tells Joe his good friend, or Ms. Joe, Joe's wife.

   No novel boasts more varied and unique character relationships than Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. This essay will serve to analyze three different relationships, paying special attention to the qualities that each uphold. Dickens created three types of character relationships: true friends, betrayed friends, and loving relatives.

Throughout time society as a whole has greatly changed and developed to what it is now. One major part of the society is the social class structure. In Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, Dickens expresses his beliefs on that structure in many ways. Since Dickens wrote the novel during the Victorian Era it reflects and evaluates the beliefs and values of the time. For the most part ones place in the social order was based on wealth and the reputation of ones relations. In general, the member of the higher class were unhappy and those in the lower class were joyful. He does this to show that wealth isn’t everything. He continues to display that idea throughout the book and he displays its

    Miriam A felt completely choleric. She just could not forgive her husband's apologies anymore. Almon B was a drunkard. When he came home intoxicated, he was always extremely apologetic and told her that he'd never get drunk again. Miriam now knew that Almon was not really repentant. She could forgive him until she was blue, but unless Almon truly repented, their marriage would not work. Forgiveness is an important aspect in the family as well as in society, which is built on the family. In Charles Dickens' peerless novel called Great Expectations, many characters find it easy to pardon others, but some have to learn to forgive. Dickens uses the characters in his novel to

Beginning in the second stage, Pip goes off to London with his newfound fortune to become a gentleman, though all that he would truly become is a rich, wealthy snob. Upon arriving at Barnard’s Inn, Pip rudely talks about the shabby conditions of the place, even saying, “So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great expectations that I looked in dismay at Wemmick,” showing that now that he is rich, he feels he should be treated like a king (181). Wemmick even mistakes his look of contempt, demonstrating that already he is becoming a snob, but at this point others don’t take him to be one. Although this passage only talks about the ‘first’ of Pip’s expectations, one can see that they are already set too high. Pip accompanies Wemmick to Newgate prison, but afterwards says, “I wished Wemmick had not met me, or I had not yielded to him and gone with him,” because he feels he is too far above the prisoners there (279). This is very ironic, because the person who has made him ‘rise’ above all these people is a convict. Pip didn’t want Newgate to be ‘on’ him because he felt it would detour Estella, when in fact her father was a convict as well. When Pip finds out that Magwitch is his benefactor and not Miss Havisham he says, “The abhorrence in which I held the

    The renowned poet, Richard Lovelace, once wrote that "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Although many think of a prison as a physical building or a jailhouse, it can also be a state of mind. A great number of people are imprisoned mentally and emotionally. Charles Dickens expresses this message in his eminent novel, Great Expectations. This book is about a simple laboring boy who grew into a gentleman, and slowly realized that no matter what happened in his life it couldn't change who he was on the inside. On the road to this revelation, Pip meets many incarcerated people. Through these people, Dickens delivers the message that people can be

The entire story is told through the eyes of an adult Pip, even though Pip is a small child during parts of it. In his early years, Pip was strongly influenced by his guardians, Joe Gargery and his wife, Mrs. Joe. Joe instills a sense of honesty, industry, and friendliness in Pip, while Mrs. Joe does a great deal to contribute to his desires and ambitions through her constant emphasis on pomp and property. Pip is generally good-natured and thoughtful, and very imaginative. His false values, which are bolstered by his love of Estella, decrease the amount of respect that he has for Joe. His alienation from Joe and Joe's values builds through the second part of the novel, as Pip becomes selfish, greedy, and foolish. During the period when his expectations are intact, his only morally positive act was to secretly help Herbert Pocket into a good position. Upon discovering that Magwitch is his benefactor, a new phase begins in Pip's moral evolution. At first, Pip no longer feels the same human compassion for Magwitch that he did the first time he saw him out on the marshes. Gradually, Pip changes his perception of Magwitch, unlearning what he has learned. Pip becomes concerned with the man, and not the expectations that he could provide. When Jaggers presents the thought that there may be a way for Pip to get his hands on Magwitch's property, the idea sounds hollow and utterly empty to Pip. Pip learns about Estella's parentage through

They both felt the wrath of Mrs. Joe; she frequently “knocked his (Joe) head…against the wall” or the Tickler for Pip. Knowledgeable critics have referred to Pip’s experience as that of a "Dickensian childhood - stripped of his rights, found guilty of being himself, and rendered invisible by all those around.

4). Even though he aids the convict, the reader's sympathy for Pip soon increases, as his robbery of his own home weighs greatly on his conscience. For example, when Mrs. Joe leaves the Sunday dinner to retrieve the "savoury pork pie," which Magwitch had enjoyed heartily, Pip is tortured by the thought of his actions, while his mind screams, "Must they! Let them not hope to taste it!" (p. 27). He seems to sincerely regret his actions and the fact that he "had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong" (p. 40). Approximately one year after his encounter with the convict, Pip is still shown to be an innocent, caring boy. One night, when Pip and Joe are alone at the forge, Joe explains his various reasons for enduring Mrs. Joe's constant abuse. After their conversation, Pip realizes that he cares deeply for Joe and appreciates everything that the blacksmith does for him. Also, he develops "a new admiration of Joe from that night" and "a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart" (p. 48). Unfortunately, as Pip develops unrealistic hopes and expectations for his life, these positive characteristics are replaced by undesirable ones.

Since it was first published over 150 years ago, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations has come to be known as a timeless and remarkably moving work of literature. It is considered to be one of Dickens’ most recognizable works, and is celebrated for its meaningful, universally-believed themes. In order for this novel to be properly understood, a thoughtful analysis of its major themes must be given.

Victorian England was notorious for, along with top hats, its outdated “justice” system. Fraught with corruption, expired methods, and disorganization, the Victorian judiciary system was a severe flaw in the royal kingdom that was partially fed by the crime-fearing public and indifferent servants of the law. Growing up in an oppressive environment reminiscent of Victorian England’s own corrupt justice system, Pip’s journey from childhood to adulthood illustrates a gradual realization of the willful blindness of his fellow man to the injustice served to the convicted criminal, and indicates the cyclical nature of how poverty and fear feed the public consensus on crime. As explored by John H. Hagan Jr.’s article entitled “The Poor Labyrinth: The Theme of Social Injustice in Dickens's “Great Expectations”", in which Pip’s own life, as well as the lives of those around him illustrate how socioeconomic differences played a significant role in how individuals perceived the law and one another.