Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - Essay Example

In this novel, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens has used the power of language and imagery to give his own judgment on various characters to suit the theme he had aimed at expressing, in the course of which he had managed to trick the readers into developing a biased view on the characters of the play. Pip being the sole character is portrayed as an ambitious young soul who has the courage and the potential to reach heights, which analyzing the storyline from a neutral lens, he achieves wealth by luck and rather is an ordinary boy with no extra-ordinary traits.

Similarly, Estella is presented as a cunning character who treats the boys as a piece of filth owing to which she faces hard luck in life, which in reality she is a mature woman who knows how to escape male flattery and take wise decisions. Also, Magwitch is portrayed as someone who is courageous yet open hearted, while in reality he is nothing but a convict who doesn’t deserve any kind of sympathy on the part of the readers. Also, characters like Biddy have been portrayed as kind hearted ones, while looking from a feminist lens; she is a weak willed woman who lacks the courage to take a stand for herself.

To examine the bias which Dickens had inflicted while producing characters to comply by the theme presented, it is first crucial to understand the context as well the brief summary of the storyline. Firstly, Dickens had seen quite a hard life as his father along with the family had to spend their life in Jail where he had to work as a hard labor which makes his life very difficult, though he always wanted more from life still he had to take up small jobs like that of a clerk after which he eventually becomes a successful novelist (Jhonson pp 12).

Coming to the storyline, Great Expectations revolves around the main character Pip who undergoes several transformations during the course of his life whereby he makes his simple life an extra-ordinary one, as portrayed by the author. He is an orphan who lives with his sister and her husband, while later he is sent to a grandeur house belonging to Miss Havisham where he falls in love with her daughter Estella, and desires to marry her for which he would first have to acquire wealth. Earlier, he assumes that Miss Havisham will make him a gentleman and woe him with her daughter while she makes him a laborer.

Later, Pip discovers that he had acquired a lot of wealth, for which he goes to London to become a gentleman, on which he again assumes that Miss Havisham had sought him this wealth so that he can marry her daughter. Later, he discovers that the wealth was rather sought to him by Magwitch who was a convict and was melted by the act of kindness on part of Pip earlier on in his life, who also is the father of Estella. Later, Pip gets spoiled and later discovers that Estella got married to another gentleman, and he then goes ahead to marry Biddy who had married Joe instead.

Later he finds out that Estella`s husband is dead, and he had ill treated her, and thus he marries her which marks the closing of the novel. (Dickens 1942) Now, the irony lies in the use of language to portray characters like Pip and Magwitch as heroes, and those like