Resumo de Great Expectations

Great Expectations

Great expectations is a story about a little boy called Pip who is an orphan and a blacksmith?s apprentice in a village. He is reared by his unkind sister and her husband Joe Gargery the very blacksmith under whom he is apprenticed. One afternoon he encounters an escaped convict who asks him to supply food and a file to free him from the iron leg. He does so. On the other day the convict is caught.
Later Miss Havisham calls him to her home to look after her and her daughter. But he realizes that her intentions are different and her aim was only to exploit his weakness. Miss Havisham becomes disturbed after the person whom she loved left her and she uses her adopted daughter Estella to break other people?s hearts. Pip falls in love with her daughter and thinks that the old woman would arrange marriage between them. It so happens that later an unknown person helps Pip by providing him a large amount of money which he uses it for his education in London. Pip starts believing that the helper was the old woman?s daughter. To his dismay he realizes that the helper was non other than the escaped convict Magwitch whom he had helped before. All his dreams of marrying Estella get shattered. Magwitch is captured and dies in prison, and the Crown confiscates the wealth he intended for Pip. Pip?s rank gets lowered to that of a clerk and he returns to his village to his old friends.
He also realizes that Estella was non other than the convict?s daughter. Years later both meet and he finds that Estella has lost her coldness and found maturity hinting that both would marry. Joe Gargery, a blacksmith and husband to Pip's sister, remains the youth's best friend throughout the story.
As for Estella, she is not the typical soft, sentimental heroine of romance. Although finally softened by adversity, she remains haughtily aloof and indifferent to Pip's ardor. As for Pip, at first Pip is sympathetically as a poor orphan boy. But when transformed into an English gentleman, he adopts many unpleasant traits. He becomes a parasite on society, useless, snobbish, and indolent. He thinks of the "good life" primarily in terms of social status and material possessions. He forgets who his true friends are. But when he finally learns the true origins of his wealth, he undergoes a profound and salutary reformation: sloughing off false values and returning to his old friends.

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