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.

"I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me."

n  n

تعرّفت على روايات تشارلز ديكنز في سن مبكّر نسبياً، فهي أولى الأعمال التي أدخلتني إلى كلاسيكيات الأدب الإنجليزي خاصةً والعالمي عامةً. كنت أستعير رواياته من مكتبة المدرسة وأضعها في مكتبتي الصغيرة في المنزل، وأبقى أنظر إليها لحين انتهاء فترة الامتحانات لألتهمها في عطلة الشتاء. كانت أجواء الشتاء ترتبط بذهني بأوليفر تويست وديفيد كوبرفليد وپيب بيريب وشوارع لندن الضيّقة ومجتمعها المُخملي. وهذا ما دفعني لإعادة قراءة هذه الرواية للمرة الرابعة.

كعادة أبطال ديكنز في رواياته، ينشئ پيب طفلاً يتيماً فقيراً في كنف أخته وزوجها الطيّب. يحلم پيب بالثروة والمجد، ولم يقبل بأن يصبح صبيّاً لحداد في قرية بعيدة. وهنا تتوالى الأحداث وتتقاطع الأقدار ويضرب الحظ ضربته. وتبدأ مرحلة جديدة غير متوّقعة في حياة پيب، فيصبح غنيّاً مُتعلّماً، يتعرّف على الطبقة الغنيّة، ويحلم بأكثر مما حلم به. ويحلم بالزواج من ايستيلا الجميلة المغرورة التي أحبها منذ الصغر، وفي خضم رحلة المجد والثراء والبحث عن الحُب، ينسى پيب صحبه القدماء وينسى من أحسن إليه وتعهّده برعايته صغيراً. ثم تنقلب الأحداث رأساً على عقب في مصادفات غريبة وصادمة، ليعود پيب كمان كان فقيراً، فقد تحطّمت أحلامه وباءت جميع توقّعاته بالفشل..فالرعب كل الرعب يكمن في أن تنسى نفسك خلال رحلة تحقيق حلمك! رواية الحُب، المجد، الأحلام، الانتقام، والصداقة.

ممتعة، مُدهشة، تُنسيني نفسي في تفاصيلها..
n  n
...

It is frustrating being slapped around the head by classics that leave you trouserless in a lukewarm puddle. Because the failure, as Mr. Gass points out, is never with the book. You are to blame, always. I am to blame for not embracing Great Expectations with the same open-armed ever-lovingness with which I embraced Little Dorrit and David Copperfield and so on down the line. My reasons, thus: the second act loses the momentum and powerful perspective established in Part One, as Pip becomes a priggish late teen and the manoeuvrings of the cast of characters replaces the exacting and beautiful childhood reflections. The story doesn’t bounce, build or blow up for me. The plotlines hinge on a series of not-that-interesting revelations about Pip and Estella’s parentage. The characters (Joe excluded) don’t have that heaviness, that heart-crushing quality about them—instead, an all-purpose grimness pervades the novel, lending it a faux-gothic tone that doesn’t transform into swinging emotional lurches and surges. Also, Pip’s narration isn’t as interesting as an omniscient Dickens third-person panorama. Pip, as a writer, is a dull bugger. For me. Remember, I am at fault, always.

Dickens is a jerk. Nobody likes his stuff, they're just afraid to say it because he's supposed to be classy. The man got paid by the word for crying out loud. Imagine if I got paid to write marching band drill by the dot. I would write a page for every four counts of music. What would I produce? A ridiculous tomb that nobody will ever get through and if they ever did it would be way too hard and too much work. And of course if you actually did it you would have to say that I was wonderful, otherwise, you'd look like an idiot. Like when you buy a new car and somebody asks if you are happy with it; nobody says "no, I just spend 30 grand on a pile of crap". Thus concludes my critique on Dickens. Those of you young enough can feel free to plagiarize it for you college essays.

n  n    “There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.”n  n

I first read Great Expectations when I was thirteen years old. It was the first of Dickens' works that I'd read of my own volition, the only other being Oliver Twist, which we'd studied parts of in school. You know, I missed out on a lot when I was thirteen. By this, I mean that I didn't always understand the deeper meaning lying beneath the surface of my favourite classics. I favoured fast-paced and gritty stories and didn't understand the love for Austen (later cured). But there was something about Great Expectations that hit me hard on all levels and there was a deeper understanding I took from it even back then.

I should say first of all, this book makes me feel sad. Not a Lifetime movie emotionally overwrought pass-me-the-kleenex kind of sad. I have read it several times and have never once cried while reading it. But the book never fails to leave me with this hollow feeling that things could have been so different. When I was a kid, I often wished I could jump inside the TV and warn the good guys not to do something; stop something horrible from happening. This is that kind of book for me. All the not-knowing and mistaken assumptions that float between the characters in this novel is torture.

Some readers don't like Dickens. He's been called "lacking in style", as well as a bunch of other things. Well, I think he's like the Stephen King of the Victorian era. He loves his drama, his characters are well-drawn but sometimes edging towards caricatures, he has a wonderful talent for painting a vivid picture of a scene in your mind but a bunch of his books are a hundred pages too long. Whatever. I love his stories. And I love his characters.

In Great Expectations, you have the orphaned Philip "Pip" Pirrip who has spent his short life being poor and being bullied by his sister who is also his guardian. You have Joe Gargery, a kind man who also allows himself to be bullied by Pip's sister (his wife). Then you have the infamous Miss Havisham who was abandoned at the altar and now spends her days wandering around her mansion in her old wedding dress, hating men and raising the young Estella to be just like her.

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

At its heart, this is a book about someone who is given an opportunity to have all their dreams come true, to be better than they ever thought they could be, to be loved by someone who they never thought would look at them. We all yearn for something badly at times. Imagine having the chance to get exactly what you always wanted. Imagine becoming better and higher than you knew was possible. Imagine having all of that and then realizing that perhaps the most important thing you ever had got left behind.

Pip was always my favourite Dickens protagonist because he wants so much and I sympathise with him. I can understand why he does what he does and why he wants what he wants. But the saddest thing is that ambition can make you lose sight of other important things and Pip has a lot of hard lessons to learn along the way. It's a book that was extremely relevant to the times when social class was of utmost importance in Britain. Essentially, the book deconstructs what it means to be a "gentlemen" and makes a not-so-subtle criticism of a class-based society.

Who are the real gentlemen? The top hat wearing men of London with all their fine china and ceremony? Pip, who gets a chance to become one of them? Or Joe Gargery, the rough-talking blacksmith who even years later tells Pip: "you and me was ever friends"?

There is a powerful lesson in here and I love it. Even after all these years.

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“Life is made of so many partings welded together.”

Great Expectations exceeded my expectations and beyond. This is truly a unique tale of redemption, forgiveness, and of well…. having expectations. The main character Pip is an orphan, and we follow him from young childhood to adulthood through his many expectations, failures, and successes. When I say I can relate to Pip, it’s an understatement. From his idealism of the world itself, his deeply ingrained desires to have more in life, and even his supposed good fortune that is unfortunately overshadowed with a series of misfortune and struggles. Pip goes through so much! Through all the turmoil and embarrassment, he fights to fit into a new life whilst desperately trying to understand how to hold onto his old life. Is fortune always worth the circumstances in which your life may change?

“I am not at all happy as I am. I am disgusted with my calling and with my life." (Pip, Great Expectations)

“Well, then, understand once for all that I never shall or can be comfortable—or anything but miserable—there, Biddy!—unless I can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now.” (Pip, Great Expectations)

I feel you, Pip. I feel you. But as we all live life with expectations and this inner struggle with desiring for our lives to be better, I believe we can all say we suffer or have suffered at one time or another from having these great expectations only for something to ultimately turn out far less than optimal. At least that has been my personal experience in life!!

Great expectations also has a number of peculiar yet well-developed characters, and they all overlap in many surprising ways. I absolutely loved how the story came together. Each character seems to get their moment. My top favorite character is the one and only bizarre and eccentric Miss Havisham. A symbol of death or perhaps just a living ghost herself; I loved her the very second, she took the stage. She must be one of the greatest classic characters ever developed. It was her entrance alone that ensured me that the gothic undertones I started to feel at the beginning were genuine and ever so present.

"So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house, as to my thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to the actual fact."

My second favorite character would have to be Joe. He’s humble, hardworking, sweet, kind, and gentle. When I learned about a certain something he did at the end, it just brought tears to my eyes and warmed my heart!!