Themes about Humanity Exemplified in Great Expectations
Themes about Humanity Exemplified in Great Expectations
Great Expectations shows that a person can hide who they are but one way or another they are the same person inside. Throughout Great Expectations Pip meets new people and is unsure how to adapt to his surroundings. He is insecure so he wants to change to fit in. He realizes that change is only a disguise of who he really is.
When Pip was a young man, he always wanted to be someone else. Pip met new people and would change his appearance to meet the person’s expectations. He met a girl named Estella who was part of a higher class than Pip. Estella was the girl of Pip’s dreams. Because Pip was of a lower class, he wanted to become smart and rich so he could be with Estella so he decided to learn to read and write. Estella criticized Pip for not being able to do some of the things she could do such as playing cards. This frustrated Pip. He wanted to be everything to Estella, so he learned how to play cards.
Pip began to get closer and closer to Estella and further from himself. Pip started to receive money from an unknown benefactor. As Pip received money, he moved to London and didn’t look back on Estella and his family. His brother-in-law, Joe, came to visit Pip. "Let me confess exactly with what feelings I look forward to Joe's coming. Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying him money, I certainly would have paid money" (217). Things didn’t work out anymore between Pip and Joe. Pip grew apart from him. Money made Pip into an evil person. Because of Pip’s entrance into a higher social class, he felt that if he were to continue to communicate with Joe, then people would think of him as a lower class boy, which he was inside.
Pip believed that if he weren’t in a higher class Estella wouldn’t love him. He thought that Estella didn’t want just any other boy. Pip didn’t want to relate with any of his old friends. It seemed as though he wanted to change his...