Great Expectations

The novel tells the story Phillip Pirrip, an orphaned blacksmith apprentice whose aspiration will become a noble knight, describing his life from his childhood to his maturity. It can be said that it is a Bildungsroman or novel of learning. History can also be considered as a semi-autobiography of Dickens, as well as many of his works, in which he mixes his life experiences with his social environment. The plot of the story takes from the Christmas Eve of 1812, when the protagonist is only seven years old, until the winter of 1840.3 Each publication in the All the Year Round contained two chapters and was written in such a way as to keep the reader interested from week to week. The novel is set in the countryside of Kent and London. The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most memorable scenes, including the opening in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict, Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery - poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations, which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media. Upon its release, the novel received near universal acclaim. Although Dickens's contemporary Thomas Carlyle referred to it disparagingly as that "Pip nonsense," he nevertheless reacted to each fresh instalment with "roars of laughter." Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, as "All of one piece and consistently truthful. During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to Great Expectations and its sales; when the plot first formed in his mind, he called it "a very fine, new and grotesque idea."