Great Expectations

Las obras clásicas son las -en teoría- más complicadas de leer, y por ende, entender ¿Por qué? Por su alto contenido metafórico y en mi opinión, también por una razón muy simple: los tiempos de aquellos libros son muy diferentes a los nuestros.
La forma de vida, la sociedad, la cultura, la libertad, lo que era bueno y malo, todo era diferente. Si se le suma a esto hablar sobre tramas sociales, familiares o amorosas... temas siempre complicados para el ser humano, se vuelve aún (valga la redundancia) más complicados.
Y es en esta temática donde Grandes esperanzas aparece en todo su esplendor. Un libro difícil de comprender si se lee por primera vez y sin la atención necesaria.
La señora Havisham, un personaje tanto completo como complejo. En pocas palabras, ella para mí simboliza perfectamente a un padre (o una madre) buscando el éxito a través de su hijo.
La forma que usó Dickens para escribir el libro también la encontré genial: es totalmente impredecible, ya que a veces está lleno de amor, otras de esperanzas, otras de esfuerzo y otras de odio. El orden siempre varía en el libro y ese es el tipo de libros, que al menos a mí, me gusta.
Creo que no es necesario que hable de Pip o Estella, por ejemplo, ya que, si leyeron el libro, se sabe de quien se habla. Lo importante aquí, más que describir cada personaje, es describir el libro en general, the book as a whole.
¿Recomendable? ¡Absolutamente! Siempre y cuando se dediquen a leer el libro pacientemente, ya que la idea de este libro en particular es amarlo y sentir lo que cada personaje siente.

I had to wade through this for Year 12 English, loathed it the whole way through, and can't undersatnd the enthusiastic praise it always seems to receive. I don't get it! What's to like? The story centres around a completely unlikable twit and a stone cold bitch, surrounded by a further cast of such extreme eccentrics that you're left wondering where all the *normal* people went.

Actually, Dickens in general just gets on my nerves - I don't enjoy his writing style at all. His humour is clunky and obvious, I can always see all the places where I'm supposed to laugh. He always seems to be revelling in the cleverness of his own wit.

“You are in every line I have ever read.”

Why couldn't every line in this book be this good? 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.

The good stuff:
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.

The bad stuff:
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. I worked.
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 200 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!

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n  "Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."n

That is such a quote. If there was ever a novel that shows us the dangers of false perceptions then it’s Great Expectations . Pip is such a fool; he constantly misjudges those around him, and he constantly misjudges his own worth. This has lead him down a road of misery because the person who held the highest expectations for Pip was Pip himself. But, in spite of this, Pip does learn the error of his ways and becomes a much better person, though not before hurting those that have the most loyalty to him.

The corrupting power of money is strong through this novel



The money Pip received clouds his vison completely. He, in his innocence, longed to be a gentleman, but when he has the chance he forgets everything thing he is. In his self-imposed aggrandisement he can only deduce that his money came from a source of respectability; his limited capacity has determined that only he, a gentleman, could receive money from a worthy source. But, what he perceives as respectable is the problem. Indeed, Dickens contrasts societies’ gentleman (created through social station) with the true gentleman of the age who may, or may not, have any money. Pip has falsely perceived that to be a gentleman one must have money, and must have the social graces that comes with it. However, this is far from the truth as Pip later learns. He thinks Joe is backward and ungentlemanly, but Joe, in reality, is more of a gentle man than Pip could ever be.

In this, he has forgotten his routes and his honest, if somewhat rough, upbringing. He has been tainted by money and the rise in class that came with it. I think if he never received the allowance he would have eventually been happy at the forge. He may have sulked for a year or two, but, ultimately, he would have got over himself as he does eventually do. The money gave him hope; it gave him a route in which he could seek his Estella. Without the money he would have realised she was, in fact, unobtainable regardless of his class; he would have moved on and got on with his life. But, that wouldn’t have made for a very interesting novel.

Pip’s journey of morale regeneration is the key

Indeed, Pip wouldn’t have learnt a thing. Through the correcting of his perceptions he learns the value of loyalty and simple human kindness. 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 wishes forgiveness from those that love him that’s why he forgives Havisham, but I don’t think he fully deserves it. 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.



Pip’s morale regeneration was a necessary facet for the brilliance of this work. 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. Pip’s morale regeneration and revelations are just not enough to offset the past. 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.

"Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.

Anguish is in equal measures



Pip’s story though, ultimately, sad is not the most woe begotten of the character stories in this novel. 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. For me, she is the most memorable, and well written, character in this novel because her story transcends that of Pip’s.

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. His response: to repay that debt, with what he believes to be kindness, in turn. 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. Havisham uses Estella to break the hearts of men, like hers was once broken; Magwitch creates his “own” gentleman as a revenge to the world of gentleman that betrayed him.



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 about how the folly of youth can alter your life for ever. It is an extraordinary novel. I've now read it three times, and I know I'm not finished with yet.

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.

n  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.n

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.

n  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.n

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. The only reason I felt this does not merit the five stars is because of that rather random ending, a last ditch attempt at adding roses and rainbows to a palette majorly mottled with splotches of grey. The five star rating would have been an inevitability had this penultimate Dickens novel been the wholesome tragedy it showed every possibility of becoming in the last stretch.

n  The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have not relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by little, but I have kept this. It was the subject of the only determined resistance I made in all the wretched years.n

All plot points considered, it is a tragedy. Very nearly so but not quite.

دیکنز نویسنده‌ای رئالیست است. او در عصر ویکتوریایی به طرز شگفت‌انگیزی آثاری برجسته با سبک اجتماعی خلق کرد. او در آثارش با زبانی قدرتمند از دغدغه‌های اجتماعی روز سخن می‌گوید. دیکنز به خوبی قشر فقیر و طبقات پایین اجتماع را می‌شناسد.آرزوهای بزرگ را می‌توان به نوعی زندگی‌نامهٔ خودنوشت شخص دیکنز نیز دانست که همچون آثار دیگرش تجربیات تلخ و شیرین او از زندگی و مردم را نمایان می‌سازد...
والدین چارلز نسبت به او بی توجه بودند و این مسئله او را بسیار آزار می‌داد. چارلز بیشتر وقت خود را بیرون از خانه و با خواندن کتاب‌های گوناگون می‌گذراند. تجربه‌های او از دوران گوناگون زندگیش در داستان‌ها و مقاله‌هایش بازتاب یافتند و آزردگی ناشی از وضعیت خود و مردمان طبقه ی كارگر، یكی از درونمایه‌های اصلی آثار اواست.
دیکنز به عنوان پدیده ادبی دوران خود شناخته می‌شد و به دلیل واقع‌گرایی ، سبک نگارش، توصیف های منحصر به فرد ، خلق شخصیت‌های به یاد ماندنی و نقادی اجتماعی مورد تمجید واقع شده است.
آرزوهای بزرگ از بهترین آثار دیکنز است که در نگارش این رمان از درونمایه‌های تقابل اشراف و طبقه فرودست، عشق و وحشت، قتل و جنایت می‌گوید.
او در این کتاب به واسطه اعمال و رفتار شخصیت‌ها صفات بد مثل طمع، کینه، سنگدلی و خساست را در مقابل صفات نیکویی مثل قناعت، جوانمردی، بخشش و فداکاری را نشان می‌دهد. این همان تصویر آرمانی و واقع‌گرایانه‌ای است که باعث درخشش آثار دیکنز در جهان شده است.
این رمان نشان می دهد که مالکیت و ثروت نمی توانند درون شخصیت ها را تغییر دهند و پیدا کردن خود واقعی، نیاز به طی کردن مسیری طولانی دارد، مسیری که البته در نهایت انسان را به آگاهی می رساند....
بسیاری از آثار دیکنز نخست در قالب داستان‌های دنباله دار درنشریه‌ها چاپ می شدند و او اغلب، طرح و سیر تکاملی کاراکتر‌های خود را براساس بازخورد‌ها اصلاح می‌کرد. شاید اگر اینگونه نبود، با پایان بندی مطلوب تری در این کتاب روبه رو می شدیم ...آنچنانکه مد نظر خود نویسنده بود....

خواندن آثار دیکنز به زبان اصلی و ترجمه تفاوت‌هایی دارد. چرا که منتقل کردن سبک زبانی و صنایع ادبی خاص دیکنز به فارسی کمی مشکل است و به همین دلیل ، ترجمه ی عنایت الله شکیباپور به هیچ عنوان توصیه نمی شود ، چون نتوانسته نثر توانمند و بازی های کلامی نویسنده را به خوبی انتقال دهد...

5.0 Stars What a tremendous experience reading this novel has been. I enjoyed every moment of it, and delighted in its characters, its story, and its message.

In Pip, we have a good natured young man who after meeting the beautiful Estella, becomes overly ambitious in hopes of winning her affection. Once he comes into his great expectations, he becomes convinced that Miss Haversham means for he and Estella to be together. And is stunned when this turns out not to be the case. In the last third of the book, Pip learns some valuable lessons about wealth, gratitude, love, and family. And in the end is a much better person for his experiences.

I love Pip as a character, and he is of course my favorite, but there were so many great characters in this book. Pip has some great friends in Herbert and Wemmick, and he has love of family in Joe and Biddy. Magwitch is another tremendous character, and the Pocket family is good fun. In the end even Estella seems to have overcome her upraising and turned out pretty good.

All in all, a story of mistakes and redemption. But most of all, a story of love and the family you make.

I think that I will actually miss Pip, in the coming days. I’ve enjoyed being in his world.

Superb mature Dickens with the effervescent Pip and his Great Expectations which fall a bit short of his ambitions. Lots of plot twists and wonderful descriptions of London and its suburbs as well as the Thames.