Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
In an overgrown churchyard, a formidable convict attacks an orphaned boy named Pip. The convict terrifies Pip and threatens to kill him if the boy does not help him continue his escape. Later, Pip finds himself in a dilapidated garden, where he meets the angry and crazy Mrs. Havisham and his adopted child, Estella, whom he instantly falls in love with. After the secret benefactor gives him a fortune, Pip moves to London, where he develops high hopes for a life that will allow him to reject his impoverished beginnings and communicate with representatives of the idle upper class. As Pip struggles to become a gentleman, he gradually learns the truth about himself and his illusions and suffers eternally from the beautiful Estela. Written in the last decade of Dickens' life, "High Hopes" reveals the author's dark attitude towards Victorian society, his inner class structure, his materialism. Nevertheless, it remains one of Dickens' most popular novels. Many hilarious and highly readable, "High Hopes" is a goscotch woven from brightly drawn characters, moral vortices, sadness, and love regret.
