Charles Dickens Essays

Great Expectations

“Tell me your dreams for a while and I will tell you what you are really like.” Written by E.R. Pfaff in 1868, this proverb posits dreams as authentic manifestations of an individual’s identity and character. It makes two conclusions: 1) dreams...

Great Expectations

Biddy is introduced early in Great Expectations and is mentioned regularly throughout, though she is not one of the major characters. She does, however, serve as a constant reminder to Pip of what he is leaving behind and, as she is more of a peer...

12th Grade

Great Expectations

In the 1861 novel Great Expectations, Charles Dickens tells the story of a poor English boy named Pip who faces a number of complicated situations and characters on his way to becoming a gentleman. Dickens’ writing style, while indicative of the...

College

David Copperfield

As simplistic and politically impartial as Victorian novels and their common familial themes of love and companionship may seem, there is customarily a greater sociopolitical concern inserted within the narrative for the reader of the time to have...

College

Great Expectations

In Great Expectations, the word “taint” describes Pip's soiled conscience and shame for his identity, which he confuses with low class status and physical filth (Dickens 249). Pip's usage of it in the passage about his feeling of 'taint' shows the...

12th Grade

Great Expectations

‘Eating and drinking are valued by Dickens as proofs of sociability and ceremonies of love.’ Discuss the significance of food and meals in the novel Great Expectations.

Throughout the novel Great Expectations, numerous meals which have symbolic...

12th Grade

Great Expectations

We would always look in the darkest places for monsters: under the bed, in the closet, out in the woods where light could never penetrate the trees. We would always let our imagination wander to depict creatures that replicated hairy beasts with...

College

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectation is recognized as one of the most important examples of bildungsroman, that is, a “novel of personal development or education” of its main character (Rau). In this novel, using a first-person narrative,...

College

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens often used his narratives as a means to express and commentate on the shortcomings of the society he resided in, and his critiques were often pointedly focused on both the ineptitude of the legal system and the unfulfilling nature...

12th Grade

Great Expectations

Guilt represents an important aspect of Pip’s life throughout the novel. The bildungsroman that transforms the innocent boy to a decadent gentleman, then into a truly noble gentleman, shows how such negative ideals resulting into misery can be...

Hard Times

Charles Dickens' Hard Times is a bleak book. Its characters are a collection of victims and victimizers, each pitiable or damnable. Of this sorrowful lot, perhaps the most tragic individual is Louisa Gradgrind. Ingrained since childhood with...