Search

 
more

What one reviewer said about Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Martin Jarvis:
I know lots of people will flay me for saying this, but this book has a lot of repeat value. I could read it every year, for five years at least without getting bored doing it. I had read the abridged version in school, and a year ago i had seen the movie (featuring gweneth paltrow and ethan hawke). I liked these so much that inspite of knowing the story i bought the unabidged version and was plesantly surprised how much i enjoyed it. Both the movie and the abridged version concentrate only with Pip's relation with estella. The book is infact much wider in its scope. For example Pip's relation with Mr.Pocket fills more pages than that with estella.

Charles dickens surely spins a superb yarn of pip, his ambitions, desires, weaknesses, and pureness of character which is so entirely credible and believeable that it seems like an autobiographical account told in the third person. This inspite of the novel containing eccentric characters like miss havisham difficult to find in actuality. Another important contribution of this novel is to portray the relation between pip and estella. Its extremely difficult to say what exactly it is. Infatuation? No. It was the very soul of his existance without which he could not exist. It lasted from childhood till the end. Love? Unlikely. He was torturing himself in her company and this can hardly be called love. Hatred? No. Vengence? No. On miss havisham's part maybe but not on that of pip or estella. There's no answer forthcoming. Just when we thought we were intelligent and mature enough to understand relationships Mr. Dickens comes along to tell us to start from kindergarten once again.

I found Mr. Dickens style of writing quite modern. Of course there's an influence of the times he lived in but the novel has a very modern tang. In fact if the means of transport were cars instead of horses, there was electricity instead of candle light and so on, making only such cosmetic changes the novel would definitely seem to be written very recently. I just realised - the movie proves this.

Great Expectations shows intense relationships between people. For example, Pip and Estella had very much undergone a similar path in life, in regard to their relationships to the gaurdians. They both are used as vengeance against society. Miss Havisham uses Estella to get back against the male sex, to the extent that Estella is heartless. She is merely a puppet with Miss Havisham her puppetmaster. Pip, on the other hand, does not have it so bad, except that his guardian wants to show Pip off in public as vengeance to the society. Magwitch regards Pip as his triumph. Even though Magwitch cannot ever become a gentleman, he prides in the fact that he created one. This example shows the relationship that Estella and Pip share (including minor details like they are both orphans), as well as the relationship Miss Havisham and Magwitch share (both want to use youths for vengeance). This book is great and creates relationships between people who seem total opposites.




Download Great Expectations from Project Gutenberg

or find a paper copy





Other books by Charles:



Home > Authors > Charles Dickens > Great Expectations