Great Expectations Post
A young orphan named Pip is the main character of this Charles Dickens novel, which tells the story of how Pip goes from a life of poverty to one day receiving a fortune from a secret benefactor. At the start, Pip lives with his sister and her husband, and one day is taken to "Satis house," home of Miss Havisham who gets him to apprentice his brother-in-law Joe as a blacksmith. Pip is upset working for Joe, but when his fortune arrives, he travels to London to become a gentleman. Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor, but is shocked to find out it was a convict named Magwitch who he had encountered years earlier in a graveyard. Pip feels obliged to help Magwitch escape London, but the escape fails and Magwitch is sentenced to death.

Since Great Expectations was written over 100 years ago, the dialogue is much different than we are used to today. The characters use terms that someone in high school wouldn't be familiar with, but it is still fairly easy to follow. The book is fairly slow moving because of its length, but closer to the end a lot of things start to happen. The beginning of the book allows the reader to understand the life that Pip lives with his sister, and the conditions he was forced to live under. Pip's adventures begin when he receives his large fortune, and things start to move faster after that. Dickens keeps the reader interested until the very end, when Pip tries to sneak Magwitch out of London, which ultimately leads to the deaths of both Magwitch and his former partner in crime, Compeyson.

There are a number of important quotations throughout Great Expectations, and many of them can help sum up a character in just a few words. For example, one of Pip's first conversations with a girl named Estella who he falls in love with instantly: "Am I pretty?"
"Yes I think you are very pretty."
"Am I insulting?"
"Not so much as you were the last time"
Estella was raised to break hearts by Miss Havisham, and so she is very cruel to Pip in the beginning. Another example of this is when Magwithc is telling Pip about how he is the source behind Pip's fortune, he says, "but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman! And I done it." Earlier in the book, Magwitch frightens Pip in a graveyard, but turns out to be extremely important in Pip's upbringing, and becomes very close to Pip.