Great expectations

• Pip


  A version of Dickens himself trying the social class ladder
• In his portrayal of Magwitch, Dickens shows the victims of the justice system
• Pip is a victim of the social system
• Pip's initiation


  Leads to compassion and over his own guilty conscience
• Dickens uses strong ominous, gothic feel
• Pip: '"His eyes pored down into mine"'
• Dickens uses vivid, cannibalistic imagery, tomb/earthy imagery
• Pip: '"I'll have your heart and liver out"'
• Dickens uses Romanticized, Ironic imagery
• Magwitch becomes a father figure to Pip
• Estella loves Pip, cares for him, despite being cold-hearted
• Jaggers is an unlikely hero
• Dickens uses malapropisms for humour
• Magwitch's growth in prison represents Christian redemption
• The novel has a double narrative, with Pip looking back on his past
• Money is a key symbol in the novel
• Estella represents dissatisfaction despite upward mobility.
• Money symbolizes unhappiness in Great Expectations, as each character that has or attains wealth becomes deeply unhappy.
• Once Pip inherits money he becomes ungrateful, snobbish and selfish.
• Pip is content with his life in the forge before he met Estella and Miss havisham but becomes dissatisfied with his social class after seeing what he could have.
• Miss Havishams wedding dress symbolises her unhappiness at being left at the altar by Compeyson.
• Compeysons name means 'to deceive' which shows how he was deceitful to miss havisham.
• Jaggers is an example of a corrupt lawyer who uses his power to manipulate people into doing things they don’t want to do.
• The rotting wedding cake symbolises how time has passed since she was last happy.
• Great Expectations is set during the industrial revolution when there was rapid change and development in Britain.
• Great expectations is one of the greatest Victorian novels which explores many aspects of human behaviour at its best and worst.
• London is seen as a place of “great expectations“ but also as an impersonal place of cruelty, ruined dreams and poverty
• Dickens wrote great expectation because he wanted to show that social mobility was possible through hard work and determination.