The Great Expectation

题目撰写：神楽

作者：翰钦

Great Expectations (A Norton Critical Edition), one of the most important and mature works in the late phase of Dickens’s creation, tells us a story of a little boy called Pip who experienced first deterioration from an innocent boy into an arrogant gentleman and redemption as a good-natured person afterwards. Many things happen during this turbulent change. For many years this book has been carefully studied by numerous scholars from many perspectives and one is especially favored, that is Pip’s feelings changed through his road to his great expectations. Just as Dickens wrote in this book, Great Expectations, about Pip’s feeling that “when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find.” (P. 279) This is what Pip thinks after his long pursuing for great expectations in his life. After all these ups and downs, he came to understand that what he wants, as life, knowledge, love, almost everything is not so far away but turns out to be somewhere so close to him, just which he does not notice. He gets to know what he truly wants and finally finds his expectation, that is to keep your goodness and love and virtue. This paper mainly talks about his expectations lost and retrieved through his pursuit of great expectations.

Pip is kindhearted, polite and sincere at first, so innocent he is that all he wants is to be with and be like Joe, his old partner, brother-in-law and father. All he wants is simple that “when I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and until I could assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe called ‘Pompeyed,’ or (as I render it) pampered.” (P.38) In Pip’s eyes, this is how the world works and he has no notion at all about what the outside world is, he takes whatever is said and given to him, criticism from adults’ and love from Joe, and he is so timid that he steals food to the convicts under his threats, that is what Pip has been at the beginning.

But there comes the critical day when he is brought to Miss Havisham’s. The scorn and ridicule hurts Pip so much that it causes great changes in him. He begins to consider things in different ways, not only his conceptions for the future but also his attitudes towards Joe. He is in despaired desire for knowledge and being a gentleman, and he considers Joe to be a mere blacksmith (P. 60) Everything begins to change, “we changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on.” (P. 125) There is nothing to be said against it that Pip wants to be knowledgeable and a gentleman and a better self, but it is sorrowful that he gradually loses himself and goes astray in the way of pursuing these things.

The meeting with Miss Havisham and lives in London is an expectation of being a gentleman, meanwhile, an expectation of moral decline as well. In London, he is under the guard of Mr. Jaggers, who cares only for money. Gradually, Pip learns to evaluate people in terms of money as well. He squanders money with his best friends, Herbert; he looks down upon his old partner, Joe unconsciously, “I felt impatient of him and out of temper with; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head” (P.172); and he becomes the person he disliked, “so throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.” (P. 169) He is blinded by the comfortable and extravagant life in London, his arrogance grows with his knowledge, and his mistaken thought that Miss Havisham was his sponsor leads his arrogance to the extreme that he gets easily and abruptly stunned and clasped when he gets the truth. “gradually I slipped from the chair and lay on the floor, when I awoke, without having parted in my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the clocks of the Eastward churches were striking five, the candles were wasted out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the thick black darkness.” (P. 244) I think at this moment, not only is the weather gloomy, but also Pip’s heart as well. He is losing himself, his initial innocence and his great expectation is also clasping before him with the truth gradually emerging

For Pip, his great expectation is to receive good education, to become a gentleman, and finally to marry his princess, Estella. On the way of his growth, he finds his expectations are overturned from a promisingly true gentleman to a person who was assisted by a convict, He is ashamed of such a sponsor and of all his own past wrong-doings, he comes to know that his great expectation is ill-founded and in the pursuit of fame, money and status, he almost gets lost his initial innocence already.

Thanks to such a timely blow and warning, and to the not-yet-dead goodness inside him and to the kindness of his fellowship, he finally realizes his indulgence in chasing the green. He finally understands that the true expectation and fortune in one’s life lies not in money and fame, but virtues, affections and goodness. Here Pip confronted with a struggle on accepting Abel Magwitch. He is a convict at first and Pip will be crushed to nothing once he is known to be raised up by such a notorious convict. But on the other hands, he is the one who helped him throughout all those years and all that Pip possesses at present is by the generosity of him. After so many struggles and experiences, Pip finally restores his conscience and in the way of helping Abel Magwitch, he gets to know more things, the secret of Estella, the one at his house on the night of Mr. Magwitch’s return; he gets to see more clearly people around him, the coldness of Miss Havisham, greed of Mr. Jaggers, hypocrisy of some neighbors, and love from Joe and Biddy. He gradually understands what he really wants and the true expectation, to live for himself.

“There was no house now, no brewer, no building whatever left, but the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed with a rough fence, and, looking over it, I saw that some of the old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of ruin.” (P.357) The old has gone, all the displeasure and wrong-doings has been eradicated, all new hopes and new beginning is waiting for him. After all these expectations lost and found, he is bound to gain a brand-new life.