Great Expectations

I recently read a book, a good book, finally. Dickens can never disappoint, as it turns out, and as far as I'm concerned, he's the finest novelist of all time, in terms of plot, style, character and structure, and so many parameters that judge a good book. Although, he tended to be very autobiographical, he never failed to deliver, and he was at his best when he penned down The Great Expectations, a literary masterpiece that flows out of the pages and into your mind, woven into it the entire fabric of Victorian society, with all its hypocrisy and sham, to expose the vulnerable underbelly of the most industrious empire of its time. Dickens has always been keenly critical of his society, something that made him very unsociable, but also a piquant genius who saw through the veil of the Victorian elite. He brings out the human in every character of his, who are real people, with real emotions. The plot revolves around Philip Pirrip, or Pip, who, as a child, loses his parents and is brought up by Joe, his elder brother, and his odious wife, who, for all her bitterness, actually loves her family with all her heart. Orphaned at a very young age, he yearns for a sense of identity, characteristic of Dickens' own reflective and introspective proclivity. With a bit of Dickens himself and a lot others of note in him, Pip begins his journey as an apprentice in the workshop of his brother, a blacksmith, a job he despises. At the age of seven, he is interrupted rather rudely in the middle of his ruminations in front of his parents' graves, by a coarse convict, bound by shackles but seemingly not by the norms of civility. Pip is scared into stealing food, leaving a scarred sense of lingering guilt in the child's mind. He is constantly worked to conformity by his sister-in-law, and a noxious uncle, a Mr.Pumblechook, and his sense of guilt stems only from the fact that he stole some food, an act of wrongdoing by Pumblechook's standards, while Dickens consciously umbrages the act of giving food to a hungry man, in social criticism of the values held by Victorian society that chooses to overlook acts of charity in favour of idealistic forthrightness. This little act of forced charity sees Pip's life turned upside down, with the burden of Great Expectations on his shoulders, a cold, lifeless and yet stunningly beautiful Estella, and her disturbed guardian, Miss Havisham, who invites Pip as a boy to humour Estella, leading him to form a close bond with them, and later believing her to be the cause of his fortunes, well or ill. Plot stretches into the bowels of London from Dartmoor, a conspiracy to smuggle a convict out of Great Britain is also thrown in, and finally crashes with a twist only Dickens can pull off. It is a milieu of emotions, stark realism and social critique in Pip's quest of maturity when he finally understands who really matter in his life, and the evanescence of good fortunes are not to be ridden along, when he climbs up the social ladder leaving loved ones behind. Even when Pip takes Joe's gratuitous affections for granted, even when Estella cruelly breaks Pip's heart, even when Miss Havisham heartlessly manipulates Pip's desires holding a grudge as old as herself, they remain very sympathetic, with their vulnerabilities and passions, deep character and most of all, a very human side being the impetus for all their actions. On the whole, the book is a very deep treatise of human nature, a podium portraying Dickens' genius, and a literary machination that preserves the very essence of Victorian society that funnily takes place, actually, in the Georgian era. Great Expectations is a living fossil, that brings puffy shirts and pantaloons, and with it, the whole smoggy dank and derelict London, with its snooty elite and parallel indigence back to life.