ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens’ second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person.

Detailed explanation-2: -Pip is the protagonist of the novel Great Expectations.

Detailed explanation-3: -Pip is immature, kind, and ambitious throughout parts of Great Expectations. After Pip is orphaned as a child, he grows up with his sister and her husband. Pip never feels comfortable with himself and when he mingles among the wealthy, he decides that a life of privilege would be more beneficial to him.

Detailed explanation-4: -When the novel begins in the early 1800s, Philip is a seven-year-old orphan raised by his uncaring sister, “Mrs. Joe", who beats him regularly, and her husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith and Pip’s best friend. He lives in the marsh area of Kent, England, twenty miles from the sea.

Detailed explanation-5: -Dickens uses his own life stories and experiences to implement into the life of his protagonist Pip as any good author does. As this paper will explore, there are many similarities between the life of Pip in Great Expectations and Charles Dickens own life.