Pip in Charles Dickens Great Expectations Essay example -- Great Expec

Pip in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations After reading the compelling ‘Great Expectations’ by the famous writer Charles Dickens, I can gather that it is based upon his own psychological insight to life. He makes connections in relation to a specific character or event in the storyline, which were critical in his own expectations. Also Dickens moulds his selection of characters very well into the desired settings he’d created, that matched what he knew only too well throughout his childhood. ‘Great Expectations’ not only satires the issues of Victorian society, yet centres on the rites of passage that marks an important change in a person’s life. Dickens’ issue of contentment is something that concerns many human beings; this is what Pip wants most. However he never really accomplishes this until the closing stages of the book. So what exactly is contentment? The dictionary defines it as a ‘peace of mind’, where the person is ‘satisfied with things as they are.’ Therefore contentment means to be happy and in Pip’s case, happy with his life. The purpose of ‘Great Expectations’ is how contentment is achieved, with it being linked to Jeremy Bentham’s answer of this. Bentham was a well-known philosopher and he said: ‘humans strive to achieve self-fulfilment through the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.’ Dickens relates this to Pip, in the sense that Pip wants to become a gentleman, who need not work and who can avoid the certain stresses of life. Dickens’ early life is reflected by his main character in the novel. Through Pip, he presents a young and innocent boy, who changes his aspirations whilst growing up. Pip is often indirected by the themes of identity, love, money and class when ... ...elates Pip’s struggles to the ones he faced in his own life, in order to achieve contentment such as family problems, debt and education. Problems like these are overcome by sticking to a moral set of values, dispelling all the materialistic values which in the end leave a person unhappy. There is a clear message in the novel that the best way to achieve contentment is to live your life and learn from the positive and negative experiences of it. You must listen to the people who are close to you and their advice that they give, because this was one of Pip’s downfalls. Even though ‘Great Expectations’ was written almost two centuries ago; we as readers know how to achieve contentment with our own lives, by controlling and getting rid of our fantasies and phobias whilst being aware that wealth and higher class doesn’t necessarily mean a better way of life.