Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Great Expectations
- Key themes
- Social Class/Hierarchy
- Estella makes Pip aware of his
working class background - this
starts the changes in Pip
- Ambition/Hopes
- Pip hopes to make the
transition from working
class to upper class
- Wealth
- Pip has a desire for
wealth - results in him
getting Herbert into debt
- Pip does not
care - selfish
- Conflict
- Inner turmoil
- The difference
between doing what he
wants and what is right
- Steals from his sister to
help the convict
- Innocence/Corruption
- Pip is innocent at the
beginning - wants to be like
Joe - a blacksmith - he is
unaware of life outside of
the marshes
- When he leaves he is easily
influenced by his surroundings
- he becomes corrupted -
shows his naivety
- Other readers
- Marxist
- Proletariot = Pip
- Bourgeois = Estella
- Estella looks down on Pip because he is
a 'common laboring boy' - Makes Pip
aware of the class structure
- One of the reasons for Pip's
corruption - he tries to make the
transition between classes and fails
- Freudian
- Orlick - ID
- He is the dark side of Pip -
expresses Pip's repressed feelings
- Mrs Joe treats them badly - Only
Orlick physically fights back
- Herbert - EGO
- Repression
- Magwitch as Pip's benefactor
- The truth was hidden - when it is brought to
the surface, Pip becomes aware of his
situation for the first time
- Estella
- Mrs Havisham raised her
to get revenge on males
- Estella has been
groomed to feel no love
- Structure
- 3 parts of the novel represent
Pip's stages in his life
- Part 1 - Innocent Pip
- Part 2 - Corrupted Pip
- Part 3 - Pip's redemption
- Narrative voice
- Retrospective first person narrative - Pip
- Makes him unreliable? - He may not be
able to remember everything accurately
- The reader knows Pip will be okay in the
end - he survives all the hardships he faces
- At the beginning he is a child - may
have over exaggerated what he say
- His vivid description of the convict
- He is fairly honest - acknowledges his faults
- Key Symbols
- Pathetic fallacy
- Dickens uses a lot of pathetic fallacy
to foreshadow bad things to come
- Chapter 39 - stormy night -
return of the convict
- Foggy mist - symbolises Pip
losing his former innocent self
- Satis House
- Pip's realisation of where he is
in the world - working class
- Symbolises bitter dreams and disappointment
- Miss Havisham gets left on her wedding day
- Pip hopes to marry Estella one day
- Setting
- Marshes - forshadows Pip's corrupted self
- Page 5-6
- 'this bleak place overgrown with nettles'
- 'dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard'
- 'distant savage lair'
- London
- Negative description
- Foreshadowing Pip's corrupted self
- Barnard's Inn
- Satis House
- Estella
- Is symbolic of the bourgeoisie
- Joe Gargery
- Is the ultimate symbol