Charles Dickens' Great Expectations follows the traditional form of the novel. Great Expectations concentrates on the person of Pip, a boy of poor origins, who undergoes many changes which affect his moral character. Pip progresses from innocence, to corruption, to regeneration by suffering, to forgiveness. Like many earlier novel heroes, for instance, Robinson Crusoe, Pip
undergoes a moral transformation. Dickens is representing through Pip the contradiction between social status and moral status. This conflict develops in Pip when he cuts himself off from those near-est and dearest to him, while he goes off in search of money and status. Dickens development of Pip is very similar to Defoe's treatment of Robinson Crusoe. Each of the characters sin in a moral sense more than in a religious one, suffer, and are re-generated by their learning, and finally are forgiven. They fall is if unable to escape it, Crusoe, by his willfull nature must go to sea despite his father's warnings and Pip deluded and bedazzled by high society and a fanciful love, also must leave his proper station. They must go through a process of suffering, disappoint-ment and discovery before they learn a moral life.
This is essentially the novelist's traditional treatment of
the hero and his moral growth. Dickens uses this basic pattern, but adds a unique touch by uniting various characters, such as, Miss Havisham and Magwitch through Compeyson, as well as through Estella and he puts the themes together through coincidences in the plot. Dickens, despite the realistic trend in novels relies heavily on somewhat fantastical coincidences, whereby the hero becomes more deeply involved in new relationships.
The entire narrative of Great Expectations is told in the first person, by Pip. We first meet him in a graveyard visiting the graves of his family. We learn that he is an innocent, sensitive, submissive small boy raised by his sister's "hand." The only love...