Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)

A Christmas Carol has long been my all-time favorite book, but with Great Expectations, I finally and properly met Charles Dickens. And what an introduction it was. We've probably all heard about Pip and his "great expectations," but what this really is is a rags-to-riches-to-somewhere-in-between story. Pip is an orphan, being raised by his horrible older sister and his caring brother-in-law. When he comes into money from a generous, yet unknown, benefactor, his life is changed. In this novel, Dickens masterfully weaves themes of ambition, class, love, and forgiveness through Pip's journey from the marshes to the heart of London society. There is a lot to love about this book. First, I always imagined this would be a "difficult" read - you know the kind: old-timey, Victorian language that describes each wrinkle on a person's face. However, I found Great Expectations surprisingly approachable and readable. Yes, Dickens is vivid in his characterizations and settings, but never to the point of being overwhelming. In fact, the character of Pip is so well done that he even feels older by the end of the book. His growth and complexity throughout this novel are second to none. I've never read a child character, who acts and speaks like a child, grow up before my eyes into a well-formed, thinking adult. Other characters are just as vivid, like Joe, Miss Havisham, Herbert, Magwitch, and all the others. And the locations are spectacularly visualized, from Joe and Mrs. Joe's home, to Joe's shop, to Miss Havisham's decaying rooms, and especially Wemmick's "castle," the clerk's quirky and fortified home. Dickens's balance of humor, tragedy, and heart shows just what kind of author he was. That a story could hold up so well after over 160 years is a true testament to his vision. And the ending was at the same time bittersweet, thoughtful, and open to interpretation. By the end, I was struck by how Dickens manages to portray real humanity - the flaws, regrets, and capacity for change - so vividly. Pip's journey is one I'll be thinking about for a long time. Overall, this book deserves 5 stars and its place in history. There is no other rating I could give this book. It is a true masterpiece. To be so involved in a character's journey was a privilege. I was frustrated, saddened, and delighted at multiple points throughout and that, to me, is what books are supposed to do. I cannot wait to get into more of the works of Charles Dickens.

About 50 years ago when I was a junior at a Catholic High School, we were given the assignment to read and write a book report on Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. My English Lit teacher was Brother Aquinas, about 40 years old (I'm guessing), tall, jet black hair, jet black robe, strong, stern and always a discipline-stick at his side. When I received the book, my first impression was dread--it was very heavy and over 600 pages. I started reading it, (it was period writing so quite a challenge). I made it just a few chapters, and being a teen I had better things to do. So, I went out and bought the Cliff Notes. And of course, failed that assignment. I've always had that memory, and regret. As the years have passed I've contemplated trying that read again, and late last year bought the book on Kindle. I read a couple chapters at a time, spaced out over many days. I was tempted (again) to bag the read, until a little while ago. I kicked it into high gear and began to read with more intention. I finished it yesterday, something I should have done 50 years ago. But I know I got much more out of it this time around than I ever would have then. It is truly a masterpiece--so vivid, relatable and with a very satisfying ending. Dickens' storytelling is fantastic and compelling, even though there were times I had to go back a page or two and reread for some more clarity. I love that book and love that I finally finished it. Brother Aquinas, thanks for the assignment and any chance you can you update my grade??

Pip, the main character in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, writes the story in first person as a middle aged man looking back on his life. Pip's parents die when he is young making him an orphan. Pip is "brought up by hand" by his sister, who treats him with scorn. His sister's lack of love, however, is tempered by her husband Joe, a blacksmith. Joe is a simple, uneducated man and Pip's only "friend" during childhood. Pip commiserates with Joe about his sister's verbal thrashings, trying to make the best of his unhappy upbringing. Early in the story, Pip has an encounter with a convict in the cemetery among the marshes near his home. Unbeknownst to him, this man would be the source for his "Great Expectations" later in life. One day Pip is invited to the home of Ms. Havisham. Ms. Havisham is a single, eccentric, old woman who stopped living in the real world many years earlier when she was spurned by her lover on her wedding day. Ms. Havisham has adopted the beautiful Estella, and from the moment Pip meets her, he is infatuated with her beauty. Estella represents wealth, education, success, and opportunity--things Pip values but thinks he will never have. Dissatisfaction within himself grows as he wants to be more in life than a partner with Joe in the forge. Pip becomes unhappy not only with himself, but also with Joe, who represents what he does not want to be--uneducated and simple. Failing to appreciate Joe's moral character, Pip's world view begins to change as he sees education as something to be attained--the sure way out of his wretched life and the means by which he could woo the object of his unmerited affections, Estella. Pip's life changes dramatically when he is visited by a well respected and fiercely admired lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, who brings him an unusual message. Mr. Jaggers tells Pip he is to receive "Great Expectations," but the benefactor is to remain anonymous until and only if they choose to reveal their identity. Pip mistakenly assumes the benefactor is Ms. Havisham, and the manipulating, self serving woman does nothing to dissuade him from his incorrect assumptions. The story takes Pip to London where he lives a life of excess and discards many virtues from his childhood. He no longer wants anything to do with Joe and believes his future course has been immutably set--that he is to marry the beautiful Estella. He shares his indulgences with his new friend, Herbert, whose acquaintance he had made years earlier at Ms. Havisham's place. The two of them rack up excessive debt as Pip sees himself as "a man in waiting" for all his fortunes to come to pass. Things are not what they seem, however. It is eventually revealed that the benefactor is not Ms. Havisham but the convict, Mr. Magwitch, whom Pip had met in the cemetery many years earlier when he was a young, impressionable boy. Pip is confronted face to face with the despised convict, hounded by the remembrances of him torturing him in the cemetery, dreams that lingered, causing him much consternation. But now he has to accept the undeniable truth that his turn of fortune is not because of Ms. Havisham's provision, but the despicable convict's desire to make him a gentleman. The convict wants his life to be redeemed for something good and chooses Pip to be that vehicle. Through a series of events, Pip acknowledges the inexcusable way he has treated Joe and wants to make amends. Before he can accomplish this, however, other happenings complicate his life. The convict, now in England, needs Pip's protection. Pip must make a way for Magwitch to leave England without being discovered. While Pip hides him with a trusted friend, Pip comes to realize that the convict he had earlier despised has more redemptive qualities than Pip has within himself. As he makes provision for the convict's escape, Pip sees Magwitch change for the better, and in so doing, Pip also changes. Instead of hating the convict, Pip grows to love him. The self centeredness of Pip's indulgences is replaced with care, not only for the convict, but in growing degrees, for others. In the process of trying to escape, the convict is attacked by his long-time archrival and enemy. As a result, Magwitch is severely injured, discovered by the authorities, put on trial and convicted, but dies from his injuries before his death sentence can be carried out. Magwitch's estate is turned over to the authorities to make restitution for past wrongs. Pip is left penniless and obligingly accepts that his Great Expectations and source of income have dissipated into nothing. Meanwhile, Estella marries someone else--a man whom Pip despises. A few years earlier, Pip had secretly made arrangements for his friend Herbert to have a small expectation out of his "Great Expectations," amounting to a sizable sum of money. When it becomes known to Pip that he will lose his "Great Expectations" to the authorities, his only thought is for his friend. Pip returns to visit Ms. Havisham and requests, in a show of repentance for the wrongs she had done to him, a sum of money that Pip could again secretly provide to Herbert. Herbert wisely uses this money to successfully buy into a business venture. He later marries and moves overseas in his business pursuits--none of which would have been possible without Pip's anonymous provision to Herbert. Pip credits this as the only redeeming thing he has accomplished, reflecting on all the other things he did or didn't do that could have been used for good. Pip falls ill following the death of his convict friend, Magwitch, and Joe comes to England to care for him until he is well. Joe surreptitiously leaves early one morning when Pip is sufficiently recovered, and when Pip wakes up, he discovers Joe has paid off all his creditors. Pip immediately returns home in penitence to confess to Joe all his past wrongs, realizing that Joe is a better man than he. He recognizes in his now humble state that his "Great Expectations" deceived him into using it as a source of pride against Joe. Upon arriving home, Pip's expectations are not what he envisioned. His sister who raised him by hand has long since died as a result of an attack on her by the evil Orlick. His childhood friend and confidant, Biddy, has just married Joe. In the end, redemption works its way for good. Joe and Biddy are happily married and the sore memories of Pip's sister are forgotten. Pip returns to London and within a month, leaves England and joins Herbert's firm, Clarriker and Company, overseas. Pip lives abroad with Herbert and his wife, and after successfully making partner, eleven years later, returns to his boyhood home in England. He discovers Joe and Biddy now have a son who reminds him of himself. Before bidding Joe and Biddy a final farewell, Pip makes one last trip to the Havisham place, the old woman having died many years earlier. Pip discovers Estella in the garden, a chance meeting since she no longer lives there. The old house and brewery have been torn down and sold off except for the garden enclosed by the ivy covered wall. Years of a stormy, failed marriage have softened Estella's vindictive, prideful nature, and she confesses that "suffering has been stronger than all other teaching and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be." The reader is left to ponder whether Pip and Estella ever marry because Pip says, "I saw no parting from her." In the end, Pip learns much about what matters--wisdom he would not have possessed if he had stayed working at Joe's forge. As a middle aged narrator looking back, there is sadness but sweetness about what he has lost because of what he has gained. Perhaps the reader is the real winner, having seen redemption on so many levels within each character. In the end, if we are honest, we can identify these shortcomings in ourselves. If Pip can work out his "Great Expectations" to bring redemption, perhaps we can, also--that is, again, if we are honest. Our sinful nature will always be there, but if we look for good, God will not disappoint us. Maybe "Great Expectations" will not only find us, but redemption will be there, too, just as it was in Pip.

Great Expectations is great! Don't really understand the struggle with Dickens. this work is approachable and touches on common feelings. Good, human

I had to read this in college and am, years later, reading it for fun. It is still thought- provoking and entertaining.

Addition to my collection of classic literature. Firm, Easy to read the pages.

It is impossible to exaggerate the satisfaction this book gives to its reader and the power of its deep human sympathy. If you were to read only ten books in your lifetime, Charles Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS should be one of them. If you were to listen to just one audiobook in your life, Frank Muller's narration of Great Expectations should be it. One of the most complimentary things that can be said of such a performance is that it leaves you feeling that the work can be read only in that way. Muller accomplishes this, with the curious and endearing twist that Pip's own narration comes with an American accent, while all others speak in the unforgettable idiom of their place among the English classes and subclasses. Muller on Dickens is a triumph that even Dickens would have applauded. Now, for the book. The personae will stay with you forever. Pip himself. The deeply generous Joe Gargery. The immortally beautiful Estella, her heart in the end made soft through suffering. Miss Havisham, too terrible to believed but in the end redeemed from her lake of bitterness, if her cry, 'What have I done?!' is to be taken innocently. Wemmick and the Aged P, then - belatedly, Miss Skiffens the gloved. Herbert, then Herbert and Clara. Jaggers, about whom one is left to ponder, 'Who *is* this man?' Dickens and Muller are at their best with scoundrels. Expectations provides them no shortage of villains upon whom to practice. Pumblechook. Bentley Drummle. Old Orlick. Compeyson, about whom the best thing said is that he has drowned. Dickens' keen eye for the glory and the pathetic depths of humanity is almost unparalleled in English literature, with apologies to his critics. He knows that there are Gargeries and Biddies and Herberts. He understands this without for a moment denying the hell in human hearts that is comprised by the likes of Pumblechook with his false respectability and Orlick with his violent, drooling hatreds. He has comprehended that heaven - if he believed there is such a place - is likely populated by people surnamed Havisham, Jaggers, and Magwitch, who perhaps dance the more vigorously for having been much forgiven. Yet writing *about* Dickens and his worlds takes time that could be spend on reading Dickens and of his worlds. For that you'll need to pick up Great Expectations.

it will be hard for my son to make an assessment of what the book is about since I have a different cover, one of a young women. Wish they could sort their products better and show what they're selling.

One of Dckens finest works.

Great history book and excellent array of new words for GCSE students

I always wanted to read this classic and am very pleased with the edition. I have another book from the same penguin series that I bought a few years ago where all the pages fall out, but this one is a pleasurable and reliable companion. Fast delivery.

Bueno

Ottimo libro e il prezzo più che accessibile 🫶