Great Expectations

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This changes him and he is, essentially, a much better person for it. He learns the errors of his ways, and how shameful and condescending his behaviour has been to those that hold him most dear, namely Joe. You can feel the pain in his narration as he tells the last parts of his story; it becomes clear that Pip could never forgive himself for his folly. He is repentant, but the damage is done. Heaven knows we never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of the earth, overlaying our hard hearts.

It creates an ending that, for me, was perfect. It is not the ending that Pip thought he would get, but it is the ending this novel deserved. He has grown but, like Havisham, cannot turn back the clocks. The ending Joe receives signifies this; he, as one of the only true gentleman of the novel, receives his overdue happiness.

Whereas Pip is destined to spend the rest of his life in a state of perpetual loneliness, he, most certainly, learnt his lesson the hard way. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape. Abel Magwitch and Miss Havisham are two incredibly miserable individuals because life has really got them down. Havisham is the caricature of the spinster; she is stuck in the past quarter to nine to be precise and is unable to move on; she has turned bitter and yellow; she has imposed herself to perpetual agony.

Despite her harshness and venom there is a flicker of light within her soul that Pip unleashes. And then there is the lovable Abel Magwitch. The poor man had been used and cheated; he had been bargained away and sacrificed. He has been shown no kindness in his life and when he meets a young Pip in the marshes he is touched by the small measure of friendship the boy offers him. These characters are incredibly memorable and harbour two tragic and redemptive stories. But, in order to display their anguish to the world and society, they both use another to exact their revenge.

I love Great Expectations. It is more than just a story of love; it is a strong story about the power of loyalty and forgiveness; it is a story about falsehoods and misperceptions; it is a story of woe and deeply felt sadness: It is an extraordinary novel. I've now read it three times, and I know I'm not finished with yet. View all 18 comments.

Sep 10, Stephen rated it it was amazing Shelves: Great Expectations …were formed The votes have been tallied , all doubts have been answered and it is official and in the books After love, love, loving A Tale of Two Cities , I went into this one with, you guessed it [insert novel title] and was nervous and wary of a serious let down in my sophomore experience with Dickens.

Silly me, there was zero reason for fear and this was even more enjoyable than I had hoped. Not quite as standing ovation-inducing as A Tale of Two Cities , but that was more a function of the subject matter of A Tale of Two Cities being more attractive to me. Dickens prose is the essence of engaging and his humor is both sharp and subtle and sends warm blasts of happy right into my cockles. In addition to his ability to twist a phrase and infuse it with clever, dry wit, Dickens is able to brings similar skill across the entire emotional range.

When he tugs on the heart-strings, he does so as a maestro plucks the violin and you will feel played and thankful for the experience. For now my repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the hunted, wounded, shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to Joe. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition.

There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one. Dickens never bashes over the head with the emotional power of his prose. In fact, it is the quiet, subtle method of his delivery of the darker emotions that make them so powerful. Combine his polished, breezy verse with his seemingly endless supply of memorable characters that is his trademark and you have the makings of a true classic There are so many unique, well drawn characters in this story alone that it is constantly amazing to me that he was able to so regularly populate his novels with such a numerous supply.

To name just a few, Great Expectations gives us: Joe Gargery, - the cold and unemotional Estella, - the officious, money-grubbing Mr. Pumblechook, and - the iconic Victorian businessman Mr. The only criticism I have for the book is that I tend to agree with some critics that the original "sadder" ending to the story was better and more in keeping with the rest of the narrative.

However, as someone who doesn't mind a happy ending, especially with characters I have come to truly care for, that is a relatively minor gripe. A few bonus quotes that I thought were too good not to share: View all 72 comments. View all 17 comments. Boring, dull, lifeless, and flat. This is so drawn out and boring I kept having to remind myself what the plot was. Best to get someone else to sum up the story rather than undergo the torture of reading it.

View all 56 comments. A young, amiable boy Philip Pirrip with the unlikely nickname of Pip, lives with his older, by twenty years, brutal, no motherly love, that's for sure unbalanced married sister, Georgiana, his only relative which is very unfortunate, strangely the only friend he has is Joe, his brother-in -law. She, the sister, beats him regularly for no apparent reason, so the boy understandably likes to roam the neighborhood for relief, thinking about pleasant things, the dreams of escape One night while visiting the graves of his parents, a desperate, fugitive convict finds him, and threatens the boy in the dark, disquieting, neglected churchyard cemetery, the quite terrified juvenile fears death , the man , a monster in his eyes Pip provides the criminal with food, stealing from his sister but always with the threat of discovery and vicious punishment, the whipping, he knows will follow.

Later this has surprising consequences in the future when Pip becomes older, if not wiser. An unexpected invite from the eccentric, man -hating Miss Havisham the riches person in the area, who is nuttier than a Fruitcake changes Pip prospects for the better. How weird is Miss Havisham? This recluse still wears her wedding dress, that is literally falling apart, repairs can only do so much decades after being jilted at the altar, she can never forget the unworthy, treacherous fiance who took advantage of the naive woman, for financial gain and move on Mysterious money given to the lad arrives, from who knows where but Pip is happy and doesn't ask too many questions , would you in his bad situation?

So he goes to London to become a gentleman, the poor boy now can have a real life, is happy for the first time and even better has a chance, maybe, a hope, to be honest a miracle would have to occur to win the affection of Estella, the beautiful, intelligent, however somewhat arrogant girl Miss Havisham foster daughter.

Unusual ending keeps this always interesting, as we the reader follow lonely Pip , in his almost fruitless struggle for success, yet this famous classic has one of the most original characters ever imagined in literature. A "person" that cannot be forgotten. View all 12 comments. Jan 04, Matt rated it liked it Shelves: Admittedly, I can be a bit dismissive of the classics. By which I mean that many of my reviews resemble a drive-by shooting. Even though I should expect some blowback, I still get a little defensive.

I console myself with the belief that I have relatively decent taste. Indeed, I have two principled reasons for not liking many certified classics. I have one paranoid reason, and one semi-principled reason. Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to read so many so-called classics? A conspiracy of English majors and literature majors and critics all over the globe.

These individuals form an elitist guild; like all guilds and licensing bodies, their goal is to erect barriers to entry. This snooty establishment has elevated the most dense, inscrutable works to exalted status, ensuring that the lower classes stay where they belong: What if they are wrong? Am I the only one who thinks it possible that true greatness lies within Twilight? My principled objection to various classic novels is that I love reading, and have loved to read from an early age I also loved to complain from an early age.

To that end, classics are the worst thing to ever happen to literature, with the exception of Dan Brown. Every drug dealer and fast-food marketer knows that you have to hook kids early in life. Forcing students to consume classics too soon is akin to the neighborhood dope peddler handing out asparagus and raw spinach. The problem is worst in high schools, where English teachers seem intent on strangling any nascent literary enjoyment in the crib.

At least, that was my experience. When my teacher tried to shove Dickens down my throat, I started to lose interest in the written word, and gain interest in the girls on the cheerleading chess team. Great Expectations was one of the first classics to which I returned. Returned with a shudder, I might add. Heck, I liked it even. Save your hate mail. I do not come here to condemn Dickens, merely to damn him with faint praise. In many ways, Great Expectations is prototypical Dickens: The central character, the first person narrator, is an orphan surprise!

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh-mist was so thick that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village — a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there — was invisible to me until I was quite close under it.

Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks. Pip helps Magwitch out of his shackles, and steals him a pie and some brandy. Later, Magwitch is recaptured, though Pip remains fearful that his role in the attempted escape will be discovered. Later, young Pip is taken to the home of the wealthy old Miss Havisham, to play with her adopted daughter, Estella. She was left at the altar as a younger woman, and now whiles away her days in her crumbling wedding dress, all the clocks in her house stopped at 8: Nevertheless, Pip falls in love with Estella.

This begins the long period of insufferable Pip, who will constantly struggle to rise above his station, while simultaneously racking up debts and alienating the people who truly love him. At some point, Pip is approached my Mr. Jaggers, a cunning lawyer with many clients who end up at the end of a noose he also has a compulsive propensity towards hand-washing.

To receive his money, Pip is told he must travel to London, become a gentleman, and retain his name. Pip does so, believing all the while that his benefactor is Miss Havisham. Of course, this being a Dickens novel, there is a lot more swirling about. Everywhere you look, there are colorful satellite characters who seem all the more lively for orbiting Pip.

Though unlikeable at times, Pip is mostly dull. Mainly, I attribute this to the first-person narrative. It is easy to look out onto the world, and harder to look inward. Thus, Pip is better at dramatizing the people he meets than in understanding himself. There is also Herbert Pocket, who becomes friends with Pip, even though their relationship begins with near-fisticuffs. Pocket comes from a huge, dysfunctional family, that Dickens describes with apparent glee. Character lists may become necessary.

Of course, Dickens hates randomness, and it is worth bearing in mind that most of the people you meet, even the secondary personages, will tie back into the main story. Great Expectations involves a bit of a twist. If it is possible to spoil something published in The bigger and messier the better. I think this has something to do with payoff. Usually, when you read a novel, it moves towards some sort of climax, a set piece of action or emotional upheaval and resolution. With Dickens, though, you are moving towards a lesson. He was a great moralizer and critic, and he used his novels as a canvas on which to make his points.

Great Expectations is no exception. It is a homily directed at a Victorian England stratified by class and family background, where station was defined even more by lineage than by wealth. Against this backdrop, young Pip goes out into the world, abandons his family and faithful old Joe, makes horribly inaccurate judgments about people, and finally learns that there is no place like home. View all 22 comments. Feb 06, Nayra. View all 15 comments. I reckon then that my rating should be around Eight Stars since Reality would be Five Stars and as my Expectations were on the negative axis—with an absolute value of about three--, it has resulted in a positive eight.

The Great Eight, I should anoint this book, then. How and when were my expectations formed? A child horrified by cruel settings. Then it followed a couple of encounters with the somewhat compulsory activity of reading still incomprehensible text with abstruse terms, obscure and alien meaning and unpronounceable titles. The Pickwick Papers … phew…!!! That was Dickens for me.

Great Expectations

Clearly on the negative values. Expectations were affected by my relatively recent read of Bleak House. The humour and the excellent construction of the plot were the reality checkers. That could have also been an exception, though. But yet again, the humour in GE captivated me, both in some of the situations, the characterisation and the language -- with the effective use of repetitions.

But these I observed more from the box of a historian and not from the sentiments of a citizen.

Plot Overview

The world has changed too much for engaging that kind of empathy. And the somewhat caricatured characters, drawn in black and white, gained the solidity of statues. If not made of flesh they were imposing.

Full redemption was sealed when I then watched this filmed version , one of the many old versions that may have daunted me years ago…and found it delightful… and funny. My thinking of Dickens now is of a sophisticated facetious writing, and this I could now detect in the filmed version. May be the quality of the camera work, surprisingly sophisticated, as well as the excellent acting, enchanted me.

No longer perceived as dreary, the old prejudices have positively been dissolved. Even the filmed version has been exorcised. Braced with courage, I took the risk to watch a newer filmed version. This is dangerous because often modern renditions of classics which have been filmed many times, is to depart from the book and offer us an excursion into the sensational, with explicit passion and sex, and modern dialogue. Well, this production was another joy. Excellent acting and filming. But the most interesting feature was their fleshing out the somewhat caricatured characters. Modern psychology has been infused in the reasoning and motivations of the personalities, so that we understand them more.

Yes, even the eccentric Miss Havisham or the much more complex Estella come across not as endearing characters thanks to their peculiarity, but as multifaceted individuals. Likelihood at the expense of the humour,-- but everything has a price. This other version used the original ending, since Dickens changed it after his friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton advised him to do so.

This was another perk of watching this excellent version. We expect expectations to be better than reality…. It is nice when reality is the other way around. View all 28 comments. I took me nearly three whole months to finish it. Not because it was bad, but because it dragged and dragged and there are far more intriguing books out there than Great Expectations.

An exciting cast of characters, most of them very weird, extravagant and almost to completely ridiculous. By far my favourites are Joe - because he's such a goodhearted person - and Miss Havisham - because I totally look up to her dedication to melodrama. What also got me hooked were the huge revelations in this book.

There were a few things that I did not see coming. Too many words, too many pages. I was completely demotivated to ever finish this, which is why I made myself write a term paper about it so that I would actually pick it up again and read all of it. Honestly, though, this book was originally published in a Victorian Periodical. Imagine watching your favourite TV Show and waiting for a new episode every week. Well, it was like that with this novel. It was published in several instalments.

The readers needed to be entertained enough so that they would buy next weeks magazine copy. This also means that Charles Dickens needed to fill the pages every week so that the readers got what they paid for. And I'm afraid it also reads like that. If this novel was pages shorter, I might have enjoyed it more. There was so much going on that I didn't care about, so many details that could have been omitted.

Overall a fine classic and a well-plotted story that bored me with its obsession for things unimportant. I can't wait to watch the adoption with Helena Bonham Carter, though! Find more of my books on Instagram It is almost hard to believe that Dickens stays the same when you read him on several occasions in your life.

Somehow, the words and their meanings seem completely different. Obviously, it is my life experience that has changed, not the story. I find that to be one of Dickens' major achievements: Great Expectations has both, and I found mysel It is almost hard to believe that Dickens stays the same when you read him on several occasions in your life. Great Expectations has both, and I found myself deeply engaged in the development of the immature character of the narrator, amazed at the techniques Dickens used to show the treachery and snobbery of the person who is in charge of telling the story - not an easy task, but wonderfully mastered.

How is Pip going to show his faithlessness towards Joe if he is telling the story from a perspective where he is unaware of it? Dickens does it not so much through flashback moments as in David Copperfield , but rather by describing the setting in a way that gives the reader more knowledge than the narrator. And yes, I enjoyed the drama of the plot as well. There is no one like Dickens to make you shiver in the face of convicts, or shake inside Newgate prison! Hard times ahead, picking another Dickens to read or re-read!

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Update on the night I am wrapping up Bleak House: I can't wait to disagree with him in the same pleasant way we disagreed on David Copperfield. View all 32 comments. What a superb title this is; wonderful, in the best and truest sense of the word.

It is upbeat, exciting, and full of intrigue. It quickens our pulse and gives us a little thrilling frisson. We want to meet them. We want to share their anticipations and their pleasure. We are hooked into the story by these first two words. Perhaps most significant of all is that it is a short, memorable title. Great Expectations is one of Charles Great Expectations. It was also serialised in the US — oddly a few days before - and on the continent.

The silver lining in this cloud is that there are a plethora of illustrations by other artists, both contemporaneous and later. By now Dickens was a master of his craft. He had abandoned the lengthy titles, which sometimes took up half a page and which are rarely used in full. He had also learned, wisely, that his public liked optimism. They do not attract us in the same way, nor are they timeless in appeal, whereas the title Great Expectations could have been coined yesterday.

In other ways too this novel stands head and shoulders above some of the others which precede it. It is so weighty that it is in danger of toppling over, and many readers struggle with the complexity of it. There are several interwoven plots, and although it contains some of his finest writing, Dickens makes few concessions to those who prefer one strong thread to follow. Conversely Great Expectations has a streamlined plot which moves along at a good pace.

We are mesmerised by the forceful characters, and crave desperately to unravel the mysteries. In Great Expectations Dickens returns to one of his favourite themes: Yet the difference in execution between these two is startling. It has a myriad of cameos, both comic and grotesque. It has a strong social conscience, humour, and tragedy. But it also has all the faults of a young writer fully on display.

It is overful of hyperbole, with a cardboard hero who is well nigh a saint. With Great Expectations Dickens has reached his pinnacle. He has written a novel full of heartbreak and obsessions of various kinds, and the reader is putty in his hands. He has learned to control his expostulations; his declamatory outbursts, his overt theatricality, and therefore has written a much more gripping and persuasive novel.

This is a novel with everything you could want. There is adventure, excitement, horror and passion. There is madness and vast wealth beyond imagination, and a benefactor who is to remain mysterious until the denouement. There are vicious crimes, wife-beating and murders, duplicity and depravity, malicious cruelty, and characters crazed by love and obsession.

There is humour, ridicule, absurdity - and overwhelming sadness and grief. It is, in short, a perfect Dickens novel. It is a gothic masterpiece. You will thrill to the horrors of Satis House and its half-crazed inhabitant. You will despair at the ineptitude of the hero, blinded by his passion for a young woman whose heart has been turned to stone. You will cry for the nobility of the steadfast Joe, wanting nothing for himself; only wanting to do what is right.

The central character is Pip, Philip Pirrip, plagued by his feelings of inferiority at his thick boots and coarse hands. He desires wealth and status, and for some part of the novel it looks as if he might be groomed for this. We do not have much compassion for Pip. He seems an insensitive, selfish and self-centred brat of a boy, for more than half the novel. Once destined to become a gentleman, Pip becomes increasingly arrogant and embarrassed by what he sees as his humble origins - and unforgivably casts off the man who had been his protector. We wonder how he will ever become the Dickens hero we feel he must inevitably become.

The deserving are usually rewarded in the end, and the cruel, wicked or manipulative characters usually suffer an ignominious fate. Dickens liked to please his readers; to make them feel life was as it should be. It reassured them that however messy their own lives were, things would work out alright for the heroic characters they had been reading about and championing in their newspapers, for over a year. Is this then an exception? The answer is no. Dickens, once more, has used his skill and created a superb subtly layered novel.

The novel is straightforward in its time frame, with events moving forward logically, except where there is some reported history which is usually crucial to move the story along, by one of the characters. But in among the intrigue and the action, we hear the voices of three Pips, and occasionally an omniscient narrator and occasionally even Dickens himself, when he cannot resist giving an opinion or two, or poking fun at one of his creations.

Surely then, it must be hard to read? And again, the answer is no. It moves seamlessly between the voices, yet they add a richness and depth. We know that Pip is to become a deserving character; an upright young man. And we know this because we see him there on the page, in every word that he narrates. We see the characters through his eyes, and we gain a full picture of them.

And the story he has to tell thrills us. It is unbelievably grotesque and riddled with gloom, full of coincidences, with highly exaggerated vivid characters, yet we believe every word, and are compelled to keep turning the page. We soak up the darkly terrifying descriptions, and the ominous sense of place. We wonder - surely these places could not exist. But yes, they could, and yes, sometimes they did. He describes Cooling Castle ruins and the marshes evocatively, imbuing the narrative with dark foreboding and menace. As a young child himself, between the ages of 5 and 11, he had lived in Chatham, and this is only a couple of miles away from Cooling.

Cooling churchyard actually contains not just five but thirteen child graves all together, from two families in the village who were related. Perhaps Dickens - unusually - toned this down, for fear of scepticism on the part of his readers. The lively and caustic descriptions make us smile, although the smile may well be a rueful grimace. It is located at Chalk village in Kent. Dickens and his wife Catherine had stayed there on their honeymoon in What about the historical facts; are they accurate? The answer is mostly, yes, although some dramatic license has been taken with the timing.

Convicts in Britain were not actually sent to America any more at the time of Great Expectations. It had stopped in , and after then they were sent to Australia. It is estimated that , criminals were transported to Australia between and and this is 8 years before this novel was published. Transportation was abolished in , but was as the novel says, for life. If a convict ever returned to Britain, they were hanged by law, until , even though the original offences were sometimes quite minor by modern standards.

Dickens was also particular as to detail. There are two exciting and dramatic river scenes in the book, one at the beginning in the marshes, and an echo of it as the novel rushes headlong along the river to its climax. Dickens wanted to ensure that his description of the course of the boat was authentic under these conditions. In order to make absolutely sure, and perhaps explore further possibilities, he hired a steamer for the day of 22nd May The route was from Blackwall to Southend.

Accompanying him on board were eight or nine friends, and also three or four members of his family. They all assumed Dickens was enjoying a relaxed summer day out, as he entertained them as usual. But in truth, his mind was working overtime, keenly observing and noticing every single detail. Nothing escaped his attention, as he made a mental note of what happened on each side of the river during the course of their journey. Dickens turned it into a crumbling ruin, full of cobwebs and their menacing lurkers , rats and dust. So we see chapter and verse about the places.

We also know that he often liked to include people he knew in his novels, sometimes in homage, but with notorious or famous celebrities of his time, it was more often to poke fun at them. Are there any such in Great Expectations. Certainly there are, yes. Just think of the most likely character, the most over-the-top grotesque imaginable. Are you thinking of Miss Havisham, crazed by her grief and loss view spoiler [ who had vowed to wreak havoc on all mankind hide spoiler ]?

For, incredibly, she is based on a real person. Miss Donnithorne was a recluse and an eccentric. She also left her front door permanently ajar, in case her groom ever returned. His domestic life was in tatters, as it had rapidly gone downhill in the late s, and he had now separated from his wife, Catherine. He was having a secret affair with an actress, the much younger Ellen Ternan, who could well be the basis for the character of Estella. During the writing of Great Expectations, Dickens went on tour, reading and acting out parts of his immensely popular novels.

In March and April alone, he gave six public readings. More like performances, they were very successful in every way, but it took a terrible toll on his health. There are so many ways of sharing reactions to this novel. I have just tried to give a few here. You will loathe the brutish bully, Bentley Drummle and the sly lazy Orlick. Both of these provide some much-needed light relief, in their fortified miniature haven, away from the throng and bustle of the avaricious, mercantile, heartless capital, with its filth, grime and squalor.

Such affectionate portraits, these. Herbert is so good-natured; the scenes where he demonstrates how to behave in polite society are a delight. And there are many, many more. It is merely that Dickens conformed to the Victorian ideal of female goodness for his heroines. They were to be virtuous, competent, intelligent and compliant, and these are not seen as quite such admirable qualities in the present century.

No, Great Expectations is peopled with characters I am always sad to leave, as I turn the final page. Each time I read it I feel despair, horror and joy in equal measure, and surprised in such a novel to find I burst out laughing at some ridiculous aside or eccentric cameo I had forgotten. Each time I am completely taken up in the twists and turns; one plot twist close to the end will take your breath away when you first learn it.

It feels so right, yet Dickens manages to conceal it all the way through. This is a novel where the intrigue is laced throughout. I defy you to guess the ending, should it not be already familiar to you. Do you want a happy ending for young Pip? He does have one, of sorts. But Dickens was still not satisfied that it was acceptable, after his friend, the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton had said it was too sad, so he wrote an alternative couple of paragraphs at the end, slightly changing its course, and leaving it deliberately vague.

The original ending was not revealed until after his death, when his mentor and biographer John Forster wrote of it. Many critics do prefer the original darker ending, as being more in keeping with the dark nature of the story. Perhaps you may prefer the Victorian rewrite however, and to imagine a more upbeat and better future for our young hero. Most editions print the original ending afterwards, so the choice is yours.

But please, if you have never read this novel, make sure you leave a place for it in your reading life. View all 36 comments. Excuse me for this infamous pun - which I'm sure has been wearily used since the book was first published -, but I had great expectations about it. For someone as anxious as myself - I should really look into that - it Excuse me for this infamous pun - which I'm sure has been wearily used since the book was first published -, but I had great expectations about it.

For someone as anxious as myself - I should really look into that - it seems expectations and anxiety are like non-identical twins: I expected Dickens's text to be dark and bleak, with touches of sadness and even over-sentimental at times. Because of that, I was anxious and feared that if I wasn't in the right state of mind or in a proper setting which is a fair feeling, I guess: As it turned out with Great Expectations though, I really appreciated the book whenever and wherever I spent time with it and actually found the story to be humorous - as I caught myself giggling on more than three or four occasions - and even have a gothic touch - which I never supposed about it.

Parts of the novel - volume 2, as to be completely clear - were harder to get through, which only came to add up to my initial concern about the remaining of the book. Divided in three volumes, the book has different paces and approaches for each one: Volume 1, as it happens with every book we're starting to read, feels slower and more descriptive. We get to observe everyone - and the places, and people's manners - like we've just arrived to a party that's been famous for years and we've been anxious to attend to, still a little shy to go around meeting and talking to the other guests.

Volume 2, as important as it was to determine Pip's character - and also for covering an important part of his life and setting the stage for the final and striking act -, I must confess, dragged a little bit and added to my anxiety that while I was enjoying the book, it might not have what it takes to carry it to the next level, to a great 5 stars book - and to think it was supposed to be twice as long! Volume 3, on the other hand, has a rapid pace and is surprisingly quite a page turner! Everything unfolds and we find out that the characters and events were a lot more connected than we could ever have suspected them to be and, because it was so masterfully written, it never felt like those common and overused cheap plot twists.

I expected Pip's great expectations to fail as I resented him and I intimately cheered that he wouldn't become a rich man because I worried he wouldn't do Joe and Biddy - always there for him, always his faithful companions - justice if his design and ambition to become a gentleman was successful. On the other hand, I never expected that Joe would turn his back when Pip needed him again, and I was glad to find out that Joe never did - it was never even an option for him. I never expected that Pip's journey would be all about self-understanding and education: In offering Pip money, Magwitch thought he was doing his dear boy a big deed and changing his life for the better; eventually, what accomplished that was something much simpler: Ashamed of the past - his life conditions, his friends, the house he lived in - Pip was all about living in the future, erasing his childhood and trying to write himself a future like he was writing a book - conversely, the book he ended up writing was all about his past.

Ashamed of his relations with an ex-convict, initially he tried everything he could to avoid being associated with Provis, worrying about the damage it would do to his own reputation. As the story went on, Pip was able to reconnect with his past and free himself from all the shame, assuming Provis as his benefactor and fighting to save his life. Without realizing it, Pip was becoming a better person. Like our narrator - a boy who would grow up to be a gentleman as opposed to a man who was unsuccessful for most of his life and looked down in society for being an ex-convict -, Estella is also a product of frustration, a creation of Miss Havisham: It's interesting, to say the least, to follow their stories to find out if they'll be able to cut their puppets strings and become their own selves without having to comply to what was initially expected and planned for them and - as those expectations were blurred with what they wanted for themselves - unveil their free will to live on a future they could be active parts of.

There are two different endings to this story: Dickens's original intended finale and that which became the official one - although nowadays both are included in most of the editions published. On Dickens's original manuscript, Pip was to have a brief and random encounter with Estella, after being many years apart, where he would see that she had experienced sufferings in her own life and was lonely as himself: The "new" ending, although being controversial for its many interpretations, implied that Pip and Estella would end up being together in some way or another - if not as lovers, at least as good friends: A Tale of Two Cities will forever occupy a special place in my heart because even though adulthood sensibilities often cause childhood adoration to vanish in entirety, no one forgets a precocious reading of that first classic which reduces one to a sobbing, sniffling mess.

But my memories of a first reading of this are hazy at best - the absence of guillotines lopping off heads and swoon-worthy heroes who make larger than life sacrifices could explain my much younger self's lack of appreciation. And it is only on a second reading after a gap of a decade and more can I categorize this as a novel written for adults, as a work much more worthy of 5 stars than "A Tale of Two Cities" should ever be. Predictably this rehashes many of Dickens' pet favorite themes - the orphaned, abused kid finding his way through the rat-infested, grimy bylanes of crime and penury towards self actualization, fairy godmother-stand-ins and so on - but never does it distill its thematic essence into easy dichotomies of good and evil.

With all the appearance of a bildungsroman, "Great Expectations" , sets out to demolish many cliched plot devices of Dickens' own creation. Pip never achieves the greatness he aspires to or even the fantasy love which planted the desire for upward social mobility in his mind, and yet his experiences enable him to become a more well-rounded individual who sees the world no longer through the rose-tinted shades of juvenile romanticism but with a maturer outlook. All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.

And, of course, this features a character not found elsewhere in the wide repertoire of Victorian novels - a woman who practices misandry with varying degrees of success. Perhaps to Dickens, Miss Havisham would have been merely a plot contrivance inserted to thwart our hero's romantic success and create an atmosphere of Gothic spookiness slightly palpable in many of Dickens' fairytale-ish coming-of-age tales.

But when seen through the lenses of 21st century wisdom, she encapsulates a more realistic kind of horror - a woman, whose entire life and worth are predicated on the success of her getting hitched in a patriarchal society, jilted at the altar. Not a mad woman condemned to incarceration in the attic by a tyrannical figure of patriarchal authority but a woman who chooses to sequester herself from the world of men of her own free will.

Miss Havisham is bested in the end, by her own feelings of contrition for the harm she inflicted on a young, impressionable mind, but second wave feminism will point fingers at the real culprit and exonerate her. Her chest had dropped, so that she stooped; and her voice had dropped, so that she spoke low, and with a dead lull upon her; altogether, she had the appearance of having dropped body and soul, within and without, under the weight of a crushing blow.

Pip maybe one of the most unheroic of Dickens' heroes, but he is also a proper representative of a man torn between two contradictory ideals of value judgment, forever plagued by an identity crisis so acute that he appears in my eyes as one of his most fully realized, flawed characters. So undeserving of respect or even sympathy. Further, I don't remember Dickens being as funny and wryly witty elsewhere aside from The Pickwick Papers. Either that or I seriously need to refresh memories.

Not a bad film, but not a great one either. Perhaps no more adaptations in the near future, studios.

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There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. David Nicholls screenplay , Charles Dickens novel. Millie Bobby Brown Before Eleven. Week of April 14, Literary Classics Hollywood Loves to Remake. Movies I Have Seen in Theatres. Share this Rating Title: Great Expectations 6. Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

Favorite film made from an Oprah Book Club selection? Edit Cast Cast overview, first billed only: Young Pip Ralph Fiennes Joe Gargery Sally Hawkins Young Estella Richard James Cousin Raymond Roberta Burton Edit Storyline A series of events change the orphaned Pip's life forever as he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman.

Prepare for a life of great expectations. Edit Did You Know? Goofs At the very beginning when Pip is running towards the camera he steps into a muddy hole where there seems to be large wide modern tyre marks. Hold your noise you little devil, or I'll cut your throat! Tell us your name, quick.

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