Analysis Of Great Expectations By Charles Dickens

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At times great expectations and hopes can lead to a person’s downfall, which is seen in Charles Dickens’ book Great Expectations. Charles Dickens was a journalist and author who wrote fiction based on his time period, the Victorian era, and used the money he made from his many writing jobs to pay off his family’s debt (Pearson). If you look at Dickens’ life, he seems to put a piece of himself in his character Pip from Great Expectations. Pip had money, but all of it came from the wrong people. This leads him to thinking that maybe money is not that important. Therefore, if you compare the outline of Pip’s life and Dickens’ life, it seems as if they were on opposite sides of the same rope. Charles Dickens was born February 7, 1812 in Seaport,…show more content…
He worked for newspapers, and his short stories would sometimes be in magazines (Pearson). Not only this, but he was also a freelance reporter, and was also successful at this (Murphy). Once he had established a strong platform of pieces he wrote, Dickens published his first book. Sketches by Boz, was the first book he ever published, and it was a collection of his short stories (Murphy). He later wrote a book called Great Expectations which would end up defining the Victorian era. When people think of the Victorian era, some remember the queen, still many think of the things that happened to Pip or the convicts. Others may think of Pip’s attitude as how people from the Victorian era acted. Pip was a stuck up, arrogant man who thought being a so called gentleman gave him the right to act that way. Yet he ends up being a dynamic character in the end. This is because he realizes that he has no absolute right, and even though he was well known, that would really get him nowhere. His also ends up understanding that his money should have no control over him. No matter how much or how little he has, he should still be happy with having anything. There is a quote in Great Expectations that really marks the turning point for Pip. “So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise,” is a line of Pip’s that is very memorable(Dickens ch.26). It shows that even a stuck up character can realize his own downfalls. Dickens continued to write throughout his life and eventually got married to a girl he met through a newspaper
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