Great Expectations
In the novel “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens symbolism, themes, and irony throughout the story are the key details and complexity that build the foundation (“Image and Symbol”). The themes are intertwined with the symbols of the characters (“MacAndrews”). The main theme’s consist of good verse’s bad, obsession, desire, greed, guilt, ambition, wealth, crime, and character roles (“Shmoop Editorial Team”). The reader must analyze and compare the characters close to Pip for the full understanding of the novel. They each have a role to fulfill in Pip’s life. The whole story and the title itself is full of irony with Pip’s expectations. As a young boy Pip has a couple of mysterious encounters with unfamiliar life styles. These encounters spark his dreams of one day becoming a successful gentleman. Pip’s assumption of the world and ambition as a boy and then the expectations while growing up is the novels main subject. But what Pip thinks is to be true, is anything but true.
Pip’s character symbolizes a struggling young boy growing up with great expectations of life. Pip’s character themes range but his main themes are ambition, obsession, guilt, and desire. He lives with his older sister and brother in-law in a poverty-stricken community and decides he wants more than what is around him. The novel starts out when Pip is a very young boy and ends when he is an older man who is having to accept his life choices. Even at such a young age Pip is overcome with ambitions, but he has low self-esteem, does not value himself and feels guilty for his very existence (“Albright”). His sister incessantly reminds him how much she has suffered because of him. Pip’s ambition and encounter with two different types of life comes from meeting a strange man who turns out to be the escaped convict Magwitch in the cemetery on Christmas in the marsh lands and Miss Havisham and Estella in their wealthy mansion. After spending...