Great expectations why dickens is still relevant

A good way to get all formats of Dickens' oeuvre to his fans. Kent, which was the source of inspiration for a lot of his works and the place where Dickens grew up as a child, is planning to cash in on the bicentenary of Charles Dickens' birth.

The figure is expected to treble this year. Charles Dickens is more than just the writer of long novels, that schools were forcing on us. Through his works he's created some truly memorable characters, memorable because they seem real. From Oliver Twist who grows up in a workhouse, to Pip who wants to becomes a gentleman, to cold-hearted Estella who's determined to break the hearts of men because her adopted mother Miss Havisham has trained her to do so, the stories of each of his characters are always linked to human struggle, both personal and material.

Dickens himself was born in a family where his own father was continuously in debt. As a result young Dickens was sent to work in Blacking Warehouse. First, Pip desires moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard on himself when he acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the future. When he leaves for London, for instance, he torments himself for behaving so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy.

Second, Pip desires social self-improvement. In love with Estella, he longs to become a member of her social class, and, encouraged by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, he entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out of this fantasy forms the basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity to gently satirize the class system of his era and to make a point about its capricious nature.

Third, Pip desires educational improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social ambition and longing to marry Estella: a full education is a requirement of being a gentleman. As long as he is an ignorant country boy, he has no hope of social advancement. The version of Great Expectations is directed by David Lean and is a true adaptation; that is, it is not made in a different time period and does not completely stray from the novel. Most critics tend to prefer the David Lean version because of its faithfulness to the novel.

Another notable film version of Great Expectations , directed by Alfonso Cuaron, updates the novel to appeal to a modern audience. But not only are famous actors used to draw in a modern audience, Cuaron also chose to modernize the film by setting the story in New York City instead of Victorian London. Instead of the main character being called Pip, he is called Finn, short for Finnegan.

The fisherman is equivalent to the blacksmith trade in the novel. Both are considered working jobs and not high society. However, the character of Estella does not change.

One can speculate that her character archetype is more or less universal in all ages. The convict from the beginning of the story also remains constant. Through these characters that can be translated from Victorian London to modern America without much trouble, readers and film-goers can experience the ways in which Dickens captured facets of human nature that are unchanging over time.

Critics were less than thrilled with the modernized version of Great Expectations. Though she is right in a sense, the reason for such a visually appealing film rather than informative one can be explained by the ever growing obsession with music being the frame work for visual appeal.

This is best seen when Pip arrives in London. The Gentlemen did not want any communication with him, until he became gentleman himself. The message gets clear after those lines; somehow the place where you live in describes you as the person and your mental state.

The same opinion remains in our society as well, even though one hundred and fifty-three years passed. However, the same marshes are described more positively by the end of the novel. This same place will be the place where Pip will spend the rest of his life, happily with his beloved Estella. Dickens also discusses the theme of possession throughout this novel. For the people of the Victorian age in England, material possession, that was the most important one, however, was not the only one; of course, without any doubt, it was very important, as it is nowadays, as it will always be, but at the moments, it seems that physical possession also matters.

This theme wriggles constantly through the novel, but not so explicitly. For example, Miss Havisham proves that she cannot live on her own, not just because she does not have anyone, or because she is not in good relations with her relatives, but because she needs to own someone whom she can control; that someone in her case is Estella ; she is not just a persona who takes care of Miss Havisham , but she makes her more valuable and more interesting.

It was very important for Miss Havisham to control Estella and to shape her personality and looks in a way that she likes, only because she feels better like that. Later in the novel, it seems that Miss Havisham cannot live without Estella at all and that she acknowledges she is not an interesting persona for others without Estella by her side. The same theme is also shown throughout the relation between Pip and Magwitch , who, did it all to become wealthier and more appreciated, because only in that way, he could help an old friend — Pip.

His plan was not only to make Pip rich, and give him all that he could never have, but he wanted to turn him into the gentleman, and it seems that he also wanted him in his possession; that would have made him even wealthier.

During the Victorian period people felt more valuable if they had many servants, who would work for them, and whom they would feed and simply of whom they would care about. The same situation was earlier in the history of the civilization, and it seems that this situation has never really changed, except by the law.

Even today, people feel better if they have someone finishing their job and cleaning after them, or simply if they helped someone became more successful, because they know that they are the one who did it for that particular person. Dickens somehow continues to exist in the contemporary popular culture, in the postmodern period in which we live too.

We have already established in the introductory part that Dickens life and later on his novels, among which also Great Expectations , can be seen as a symbol of early Capitalism; this phase of Capitalism still exists. We can also say that Dickens wrote about so-called bureaucratic Capitalism too, which is still present today in class subdivision generally. While reading his novels, we can really feel the spirit of an industrialized city, because we are familiar with it and because, perhaps, we are living in similar surroundings.

The work ethic and the ideology of the institutions such as courts or prisons has not changed; the alienation of certain characters, such as Wemmick or Miss Havisham is also something familiar to us, because we can easily characterize with them. According to Jay Clayton this fact has undoubtedly made it difficult for readers to see how he could have anything to do with a cultural position associated with advanced capitalism—postmodernism.

This is yet another reason that proves that is very easy for us to understand his characters because they are, in many ways, similar to ourselves — deconstructed [9] as Jay Clayton points it out. This is, however, just beginning. It is not hard to find references to Dickens and his novels in the media. Tasmin Archer, an English pop singer, called her first album Great Expectations in