The Success of Wemmick in Great Expectations Essay

  Many critics prefer the original ending to the revised version because it is the ending that Dickens himself decided to write without consulting anyone. Many people believe that since Bulwer-Lytton gave Dickens input on the second ending that it is not as true. Although Dickens may have inadvertently been plagiarizing, the original ending is the way that Dickens felt the novel should end, as opposed to the way Bulwer-Lytton felt it should end.

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.

Written during the Victorian Era (1850-1900) Charles Dickens's Great Expectations has echoes of Victorian Morality all throughout the novel. When looked up in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, morality is defined as "the evaluation of or means of evaluating human conduct as a set of ideas of right and wrong and as a set of customs of a given society, class, or social groups which regulate relationships and prescribes modes of behavior to enhance the groups survival." Although the Victorian Era occurred over one hundred years ago, the given definition is clearly portrayed through the use of several morally different characters. These characters are shown over a lengthy period of time and at many different stages in

Next, the loving relatives of the novel were Wemmick and his father, the Aged Parent, for there were no other characters in Great Expectations that not only tolerated each other, but truly loved each other. They were sweet hearted towards one another, as was demonstrated when Wemmick had Pip over for dinner. He introduced Pip to his father as he let him in. The first thing he asked Pip to do for his father's sake was nod at him. The Aged Parent was extremely hard of hearing, so whenever he told someone something, he took their nodding as a sign that they had heard him. For his father, Wemmick sweetly asked Pip to nod at the Aged Parent in order to make him feel good and understood. Another aspect of Wemmick and the Aged Parent's relationship was they were caring of one another. When Wemmick went out, the Aged Parent was in charge of the house. To prevent his father from letting strangers in and putting himself in danger, as well as to alert his father when he returned home, Wemmick designed an invention that would say when he or his girlfriend Mrs. Skiffins was at the

The names of the characters in the story Great Expectations symbolize who they are and how they act. In Great Expectations there is a great deal of symbolism throughout the book as there is in life. There are symbols of isolation, manipulation, and wanting to be something else. These are all seen in the book through the characters of Estella, Abel Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Pip, and Biddy.

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

Wemmick is considered to be a strange, middle class man, who serves as a clerk for Jaggers. When the he first meets Wemmick, Pip characterizes Wemmick as an uptight, insensitive man. However, later, when Pip goes to Wemmick’s house he realizes that he is a funny, family-friendly man. Given that he is in the middle class, he is not affected by money. Additionally, he is less concerned about amount of money he has and just concerns about his father, known as The Aged, and his wife, Miss Skiffins.

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

Despite this Joe is the only character that is universally kind and compassionate, the stories only true gentleman, but is never socially recognized as such because of his low social stature. On the other hand Miss Havisham is a character that shows this relationship between wealth and immorality. She is the most visibly wealthy person in the novel; she is also the cruelest. All of her actions are motivated by a desire to humiliate Pip and make him feel in human due to his modest upbringing. John Wemmick is a very visible example of the juxtaposition of corrupt wealth and honest humility. He is a law clerk to the powerful London lawyer Mr. Jaggers. While at work with Jaggers he conforms to the environment by being an emotionally devoid subordinate who will follow nearly any directive regardless of morality. When he is outside of work he shows a

Great Expectations’ main character, Phillip Pirrip- generally known as Pip- had a rough upbringing as a child. His sister, Mrs. Joe had “brought him up by hand”, after their parents and five brothers had all been laid to rest many years ago. Another character, Herbert Pocket experienced a bizarre childhood, though in a different manner. Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations develops through the novel following Pip, a young “common boy” who grew up in the countryside. As he matured so did his love for a girl of higher class, Estella. However, being a common boy, Pip was not good enough for his Estella, thus once he was given an opportunity to become a gentleman in London he seized it without much hesitation. Charles Dickens’ had his own

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.

In Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, the main character named Pip suffers through a conflict of confusing good and bad people. He repeatedly disregards the people that love and care for him and instead chooses to care for people who do not care for him. When making these choices, Pip senses that he is making the wrong decisions and therefore confuses good and bad and also confuses himself.

The literary criticism “Patterns of Communication in Great Expectations” is an effective literary criticism, it proves there is evidently more communication between characters in the novel than most critics let onto. Ruth M. Vande Kieft, who is the author of this piece, suggests that the majority of the characters in Dickens novels have a substantial amount of communication among themselves. But, the dialogue in the novel depicted is not what we typically observe in the majority Victorian novels. Vande Kieft uses evidence in her writing from Dorothy Van Ghent, who suggests there is little interaction and the majority of the main characters attempts fail when they do try and communicate amongst each other. This article is effective in showing examples of certain patterns between the many characters in the novel. The article was also effective because it showed a different way of looking at communication in the way writers aim for when writing stories. This literary criticism was an interesting because it made me think about other novels that I have read and how Vande Kieft would have depicted them. In Great Expectations, we saw a different pattern in how characters communicate. Most family communication patterns are usually easy to follow. Although this novel was easy to read, I understand where critics state the contrary. I valued this work because of the examples stated throughout, and I will analyze some of the examples stated in my paper.