Jagger's Office

On a Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, a fire started on the top floors of a factory in New York, The Asch Building owned by the Triangle Waist Company. According to the owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were practicing a common procedure in many factories to prevent workers from taking extra breaks and preventing theft. They locked the exit doors. These owners, weren’t held accountable for the deaths of the 146 employees. Numerous workers could not escape from the eighth, ninth and tenth floors. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris would go to trial for their actions of ignoring poor work conditions against “the people.” But this was a time when there was more greed with many factory owners. Owners were not being proactive in making their

Mr. Jaggers plays a pivotal role in the novel, Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens.  We are first introduced to him in Chapter 11, where Pip encounters the rather condescending lawyer on the stairs of Satis House. Pip describes Mr. Jaggers as "a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion." We cannot help but notice that he is extremely pontificating, by virtue of him holding Pip's chin and being almost sure that Pip was of "a bad set of fellows" although he had scarcely known Pip for two minutes.

When Pip leaves his home, he is snobbish about the money he has just received. “You are envious Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you’t help showing it.” (Dickens. Page 159).

In Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations Pip does not appreciate the surprise fulfillment of his dreams and only becomes selfish and condescending toward those not as fortunate as he. Pip’s character deration as a result of his inheritance is evidenced by his desire to serve “a gallon of condescension, upon everybody in the village” (Dickens 151). Dickens uses Pips ungrateful attitude toward his home town to illustrate the corruption of aspirations when one did not have to work for his success. Pips continued under appreciation of his success and subsequent failure allow Dickens to rebuild Pip through hard work to and achieve “happiness “and fulfill his dreams meaningfully (Dickens 487). Dickens informs the reader that meaningless wealth and success is worthless, and that true success comes from hard work and passion.

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations chronicles Pip’s struggle to improve his status in English society. He is originally taught that his happiness directly correlates to the amount of wealth he accumulates. Two characters he encounters—Joe Gargery and Miss Havisham—help him realize that this notion is an unfortunate misconception, and their experiences show Pip that he not live his life by such norms.

Charles Dickenss’s novel Great Expectations occurs during Pip’s period of transition from adolescence into adulthood when others’ opinions matter far more than his own. Because of Pip’s acute awareness of societal views and expectations, his first meeting with Estella results in lasting change that drives Pip to change his social standing: “...and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common…” (Dickens 70). Before Pip’s introduction to the wealth Miss Havisham experienced, he felt no shame in his identity and background. Additionally, although Pip recognizes Estella’s own flaws, Estella’s obvious privilege and his own

In his novel Great Expectations, Charles Dickens uses Pip’s selfish goals and his egocentric mindset to criticize the values of the Victorian upper class. The reader first sees Pip’s newfound snobbishness after only his first meeting with Miss Havisham. He wants to make Joe “less ignorant and common” so that Joe will be “worthier of (his) society” and more importantly, “less open to Estella’s reproach”(109). Pip exemplifies his arrogance by looking down on Joe because Pip feels that he is better than Joe.

To begin with, Pip shows the danger of only pursuing class, as he realizes that money does not make him happy. To illustrate, Charles Dickens begins Pip’s awareness of social class in his novel, Great

Charles Dickens’ aptly titled novel Great Expectations focuses on the journey of the stories chief protagonist, Pip, to fulfill the expectations of his life that have been set for him by external forces. The fusing of the seemingly unattainable aspects of high society and upper class, coupled with Pip’s insatiable desire to reach such status, drives him to realize these expectations that have been prescribed for him. The encompassing desire that he feels stems from his experiences with Mrs. Havisham and the unbridled passion that he feels for Estella. Pip realizes that due to the society-imposed caste system that he is trapped in, he will never be able to acquire

Charles Dickens, author of Great Expectations, provides a perfect example of the hope of class mobility. The novel portrays very diverse and varied social classes which spread from a diligent, hardworking peasant (Joe) to a good-natured middle class man (Mr. Wemmick) to a rich, beautiful young girl (Estella). Pip, in particular, elevates in the social pyramid from a common boy to a gentleman with great expectations. With his rise in society, he also alters his attitude, from being a caring child to an apathetic gentleman. During this process, Pip learns how he should act and how to become a real gentleman. Social mobility and wealth, furthermore, carves a disposition and how a character is looked upon.

Corruption is a major role in modern life as well as in Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations. Pip, the main character in his novel, experiences this corruption first hand. Through imagery, asyndeton, and the judgement from Pip, Dickens expresses to the reader that London mirrors a big change in Pip.

In the novel Great Expectations, Pip’s main goal is to become a gentleman and have a high status. However, money is the center and life source of being a gentle and maintaining that high status. Pip soon gets the chance to become a gentleman and soon gains sufficient money to classify himself as a gentleman, but how does that money affect him? The money changes him in a way, but not the way money makes a man willing to do anything in order to gain more. Pip is morphed slowly like a sculpture sculpting a vase.

In the novel, “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, the main character Philip Pirrip, who is known as “Pip” throughout the novel, has a series of great expectations that he goes through. The title of the novel, as many other great book titles, comes with various meanings that are present in the story. In the literal sense Pip’s “great expectations” refer to the 19th century meaning, which involve receiving a large inheritance. Meanwhile, on a deeper level Pip sets goals that he hopes to accomplish in the future which could also be referred to as his “great expectations”. The title, with these multiple meanings that are attached to it, ends up being ironic after all is said and done at the end of the novel.

An individual’s exterior and outward demeanor often hides his or her true being. The classic novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens reflects this theme several times as the protagonist, Pip, an ambitious but lowborn boy, receives money from an unknown benefactor and travels to London to become a gentleman. He goes through many trials on his journey for success, and it is while on this odyssey that he meets many people who tend to hide their true selves, sometimes to escape trouble. The world is full of sneaky persons and it is hard to know who to trust when there are so many pretending to be someone they are not. One of the disguised people in this novel is Mr. Jaggers’ housekeeper, Molly.

Beginning in the second stage, Pip goes off to London with his newfound fortune to become a gentleman, though all that he would truly become is a rich, wealthy snob. Upon arriving at Barnard’s Inn, Pip rudely talks about the shabby conditions of the place, even saying, “So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great expectations that I looked in dismay at Wemmick,” showing that now that he is rich, he feels he should be treated like a king (181). Wemmick even mistakes his look of contempt, demonstrating that already he is becoming a snob, but at this point others don’t take him to be one. Although this passage only talks about the ‘first’ of Pip’s expectations, one can see that they are already set too high. Pip accompanies Wemmick to Newgate prison, but afterwards says, “I wished Wemmick had not met me, or I had not yielded to him and gone with him,” because he feels he is too far above the prisoners there (279). This is very ironic, because the person who has made him ‘rise’ above all these people is a convict. Pip didn’t want Newgate to be ‘on’ him because he felt it would detour Estella, when in fact her father was a convict as well. When Pip finds out that Magwitch is his benefactor and not Miss Havisham he says, “The abhorrence in which I held the