One word to describe Dickens's style : evocative. The rural English land, the Thames, cottages, tempest,churchyard, the ship of felons, blacksmith's forge, miss Havisham's dilapidated house. They come to life!
I like GE for its human element more than for its literary value. Redemption is my word for the novel. Each major charchter undergoes a metamorphosis and emerge as a better individual.
Dickens distilled the complexities of human nature and the randomness of life and reduced them to characters in this novel.
Philip the hero of the novel. Underdog. He is my first literary underdog. A village lad with no care for future. He is condemned for a life at the forge of his brother-in-law. An eventful evening with convicts at a churchyard sets the tone for the novel and as well as for the great expectations of Philip. The novel depicts the life of Philip and his transition from a naïve village bumpkin to a young man with bright prospects. In the process, Pip forgets his roots and get carried away by his new-found prospects. The benevolence of his mentor makes him repentant. Redemption!
Estella, Pip's sweetheart also makes that journey from a haughty, insensitive adolescent to a humbles and demure lady. She humiliates Pip intially. When her fortunes change and after she lost her former splendor, Pip marries her. She can only count her blessings.
Betty: is a comely lady. Older than Pip. Signifies what a noble spouse or companionship can do to an individual and to the family at large. She marries Joe, the brother-in-law of Pip.
Joe: a paragon of simplicity. A rare virtue. An individual never corrupted by jealousy and always cherished the success of Pip. His fatherly feelings for Pip remain untarnished despite Pip's indifference to Joe's position. In fact, one time Pip tries to avoid Joe, owing to latter's naiveté.
Great expectations is a testimony of Dickens's acute observation of life. The dreariness of life. The weariness of life. The pleasantness of life. The irony and surprises of life.
Only charchters that end in misery are Miss Havisham and the convict. Miss Havisham's death is a poetic end. And convict's death broke my heart. Kind of bathos. But then it shows how insignificant a man is in the God's grander design.
The novel cherishes the spirit of an underdog. it could not be serendipity that all the low-fliers in the book end up at a much nobler plane. Snobs like Estella, who knew nothing but grandeur and affluence are left humbled.
Having read the book during the pre-adolescence, it definitely shaped my thinking. I don't say I'm a better individual after reading the book. But I could say I appreciate life a little better after reading it
A novel is much more than a compendium of words and stylistic sentences. It should move the reader. It should hold a mirror to the reader. A novel is a novel when the reader could identify with a charchter, atleast with some part of a charchter. And that identification should result in some reflection about ones life. That way The Great Expectations is my Bible. It made me ponder, it forced me to see what I would end up in life.
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