Essay Topics of Great Expectations Text

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free study guide for great expectations by charles dickens book summary

1 is great expectations like a soap opera? consider all that pip went through, or just take parts, like his trial with the girl, at first, she didn't like him, and then later on in his life, she loved him. Also, what are the chances that some poor boy that no one knows ends up inheriting a huge sum of money out of the blue one day, and that the person who leaves it to him is an escaped criminal who pip just happened to help out one day. All of these things are coincidence, and that's mostly what soap operas are based on. Compare and contrast. herbert's expectations are different to pips in that he does not raise his expectations, like pip does. He wants simple things, like for clara to marry him a good life no complications or distractions. 4 discuss the alternative endings to the novel? in the abridged ending, pip marries estella. Even though estella has treated him horribly his whole life used him and then thrown him away he can still love her and be happy with her.

Home » essay topics and quotations » great expectations thesis statements and important quotes below you will find three outstanding thesis statements / paper topics for great expectations by charles dickens that can be used as essay starters. All five incorporate at least one of the themes found in great expectations and are broad enough so that it will be easy to find textual support, yet narrow enough to provide a focused clear thesis statement. These thesis statements offer a short summary of different elements that could be important in an essay but you are free to add your own analysis and understanding of the plot or themes to them. Using the essay topics below in conjunction with the list of important quotes from great expectations at the bottom of the page, you should have no trouble connecting with the text and writing an excellent paper. thesis statement / essay topic 1: pip’s personal improvement project in great expectations by charles dickens one of the great expectations insinuated by the novel’s title is that of pip’s advancement in life see selected quotes, below.

As great expectations opens, pip is hardly aware of his social and educational condition, but as he becomes exposed to estella, his consciousness becomes more astute and he desires self improvement. He moves to london due to the generosity of a benefactor and attempts to become a learned man of class. Yet, at the end of great expectations , he reports to estella that he is working hard and making a living, despite the fact that he has not quite fulfilled his great expectations. Given these facts, write a persuasive essay in which you state what dickens might have wanted to convey about the nature of great expectations. These ideas for this essay starter can also be applied to a more general character analysis of pip. thesis statement / essay topic 2: the role of joe in great expectations joe, pip’s brother in law, is the steadiest and most loyal friend to pip, yet the two men are quite different. Where pip is ambitious and eager to move ahead at almost any cost, joe is content to stay in his place.

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As a result, he is one of the most authentic and likeable characters in great expectations. You may also want to consider what pip’s request for forgiveness and joe’s response say about the nature of great expectations and self improvement. thesis statement / essay topic 3: images of imprisonment in great expectations clearly, one of the most obvious images of imprisonment in great expectations is represented by the character of magwitch, the escaped convict who becomes pip’s generous benefactor. There are many other subtle references to imprisonment though, among them the handcuffs made in joe’s forge. Write an essay in which you identify the many images of imprisonment in this novel, and explain the symbolic significance of these images relative to the theme. thesis statement / essay topic 4: revenge as a motivating factor for positive and negative behaviors in great expectations revenge is a motivating factor for both positive and negative behaviors in great expectations. Choose one or more instances in which a character is acting in a way that is vengeful and analyze the significance of the characters’ behavior in the overall scope of the plot.

Characters that might make particularly good analyses include magwitch, miss havisham, and orlick. thesis statement/essay topic 5: the role of place in great expectations there is not one single setting that defines great expectations rather, the novel unfolds in the city and in the country. Regardless, though, the sense of place is clearly important, as dickens devotes his authorial attention to developing astute details that evoke particular feelings, both among the characters and within the reader. Choose two or more of these settings and write an essay in which you compare and contrast their respective functions relative to the novel’s theme.

this list of important quotations from great expectations by charles dickens will help you work with the essay topics and thesis statements above by allowing you to support your claims. All of the important quotes from great expectations listed here correspond, at least in some way, to the paper topics above and by themselves can give you great ideas for an essay by offering quotes about other themes, symbols, imagery, and motifs than those already mentioned. Look at the bottom of the page to identify which edition of great expectations by charles dickens they are referring to. conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy but when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co operates with another secret burden…it is as i can testify a great punishment.

20 young as i was, i believe that i dated a new admiration of joe from that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been before but, afterwards at quiet times when i sat looking at joe and thinking about him, i had a new sensation of feeling conscious that i was looking up to joe in my heart. 55 i had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before but i began to consider them a very indifferent pair. 64 i set off on the four mile walk to our forge pondering, as i went along, on all i had seen, and deeply revolving that i was a common labouring boy that my hands were coarse that my boots were thick that i had fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves jacks that i was much more ignorant than i had considered myself last night, and genderaly that i was in a low lived bad way. 68 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….it bewildered me, and under its influence i continued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.

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125 i was to leave our village at five in the morning…and i had told joe that i wished to walk away all alone. I am afraid sore afraid that this purpose originated in my sense of the contrast there would be between me and joe, if we went to the coach together. I had pretended with myself that there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement but when i went up to my little room…i felt compelled to admit that it might be done so…. 156 and as to the condition on which you hold your advancement in life namely, that you are not to inquire or discuss to whom you owe it you may be very sure that it will never be encroached upon, or even approached by me, or by any one belonging to me. The space interposed between myself and them, partook of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance off.

That i could have been at our old church in my old church going clothes, on the very last sunday that ever was, seemed a combination of impossibilities, geographical and social, solar and lunar. Yet in the london streets, so crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening, there were depressing hints of reproaches for that i had put the poor old kitchen at home so far away….’ 179 it is not easy for even you…to know what satisfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an enjoyable sense of the ridiculous i have when they are made ridiculous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a mere baby….you had not your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenseless, under the mask of sympathy and pity and what not, that is soft and soothing….you did not gradually open your round childish eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up in the night…. 257 and now, though i know you have already done it in your own kind hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive me! pray let me hear you say the words, that i may carry the sound of them away with me, and then i shall be able to believe that you can trust me, and think better of me, in the time to come! 453 reference: dickens, charles. New york: barnes amp noble books, 1994 charles dickens wrote his enduringly popular novel, great expectations.

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As was usual for this most prolific of novelists, the book was first published in serial form, and the instalments would be as eagerly awaited as the lsquo soap operas rsquo of today. This novel, however, contains an interesting and informative retrospective by the author on aspects of his life, hidden from even those closest to him, which he had first addressed in the painfully autobiographical david copperfield some ten years earlier a difficult decade for dickens in his personal life and to some extent alters the perception of himself which dickens had there vicariously presented. length: 507 words 1.4 double spaced pages finding happiness in great expectations great expectations is a coming of age novel. This novel is a story of pip and his initial dreams and resulting disappointments that eventually lead him to becoming a genuinely good man.

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During his journey into adulthood, pip comes to realize two diverse concepts of being a gentleman and he comes to find the real gentlemen in his life aren't the people he had thought. Joe and pumblechook, as a child pip entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. In the eyes of pip a gentleman is to be wealthy, educated and have a high class, thus pip's desires. In his mind, pip has connected the ideas of moral, social, and educational advancement so that each depends on the others.

The coarse and cruel drummle, a member of the upper class, provides pip with proof that social advancement has no inherent connection to intelligence or moral worth. Drummle is a lout who has inherited immense wealth, while pip's friend and brother in law joe is a good man who works hard for the little he earns. Significantly pip's life as a gentleman is no more satisfying and certainly no more moral than his previous life as a blacksmith's apprentice. Pip's desires for educational improvement have deep connections to his social ambition and longing to marry estella: a full education is a requirement of being a gentleman so he thinks. Wopsle's aunt's school, and as a young man, when he takes lessons from matthew pocket. Ultimately, through the examples of joe, biddy, and magwitch, pip learns that social and educational improvement are irrelevant to one's real worth and that conscience and affection are to be valued above sophistication and social standing.

As pip grows in age he grows in wisdom and his true identity unfolds as he discovers what it means to be a gentleman. However, pip comes to the realization that wealth and class are less important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth. Pip achieves this realization when he is finally able to understand that despite the esteem in which he holds estella, one's social status is in no way connected to one's real character. As a result pip softens and gains new humanity, that of a true kind hearted gentleman. Earlier in his life, he had changed from an innocent, caring boy into an arrogant young man as a result of his nonrealistic hopes and expectations. However, when his expectations come to an end, so do his undesirable traits, as he is then a truly good natured person and a true gentleman.