Book Review

“I had a Dickens childhood”, heard once. Only reading the life or Pip, or at least his beginnings, one becomes aware of what that means. Despite the reactions a reader must feel learning about the circumstances in which he lived and the bad luck that was always on his side, making things worse, Pip seemed not to notice. Not at the beginning.

Not with his sister who abused him and exploited him and Joe, his brother-in-law for endless years. Not when he encountered Abel Magwitch, a convict on the run, who was meant to be in his life during long time. Not when he met Stella, a beautiful girl who was receiving a special training to reject men by Miss Havisham, a total lunatic woman who would call Pip to her house to play strange scenes of her wedding day —apparently being abandoned on that day by her fiancée—. Maybe Pip’s bad luck changed, as he got sponsored by an anonymous person who paid for his education and new acquired pedigree. Pip changed, the moment he realised he was in love with Stella and knew that he was poor and uneducated, and not even with his new skills he was going to conquer her heart.

When something bad happens, it’s usually something that would eventually go away, giving room to more subtle events. Not in Dickens stories. When something bad happens, is like a flower blowing away her pollen, and every particle of dust will bring another anecdote, perhaps more cruel, perhaps more vindictive and darker than the one before. Great Expectations is a book written in an spiral that went down enchaining tragedy events, one after the other. The spiral goes up, while Pip succeeds. It goes down again, when realising Magwitch was the one behind his new life, when finding out that Stella was out of his reach.

Great Expectations: One can only imagine what they meant for Pip. Was it about leaving his terrible childhood and abuse? Or becoming rich? Or getting the heart of Stella? Or finding his true identity as some reviews have adventured? Is it for the reader to conclude.

A question came to me while writing this paper. Could we compare at some point Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoyevsky? Despite their different locations they were contemporary. What intrigued me was their capacity to describe suffering. It is said that they both were wonderful in describing relationships and human emotions, but for me the relationship between both is the tragedy and the suffering. It is unbearably real and shocking. However, in reading both authors further, one can identify that there is a reason for writing this infernal descriptions of places and people. They always find humanity withing those moments. It turns out that Dostoyevsky was a great admirer of Dickens, what he admired the most was the effort of Dickens to reconstruct society. It is of my view that Dostoyevsky tried to do the same.

A book recommended to classic lovers.

Luz