Photo connection

The picture that I chose represents how Pip always wants things to be different than they are. On his way to London he is imagining a wonderful and exciting new city to became a gentleman in, but instead he is crestfallen when he sees its dirty streets and unorganized court system, but instead of looking for good things about it, he creates a pessimistic and condescending attitude about anything that he thinks he is better than. Also when he finds out that Magwitch is his benefactor he refuses to take his money anymore. Disappointment develops in to a substantial emotion that Pip expresses throughout the book. 

Connections and Picture

In Great Expectations, the main character and narrator Pip leaves his family to become a gentleman in London. This opportunity helped him meet new people and see London with the eyes of an innocent adolescent. But shame and guilt overwhelmed him with the thoughts of home and other things which Dickens uses as a motif. These themes along with many more relate almost directly to the book Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, a literary contemporary of Charles Dickens.

Along with being set in around the same time, Little Women and Great Expectations both start out with the narrator being an innocent young person. Jo March and Pip are both young and guilty but for different reasons, but both authors are trying to say the same thing. Jo is guilty for not being polite and not doing the dishes or cleaning the kitchen, and Pip is guilty for helping a convict and stealing his sisters pork pie. Both of theses instances are portraying the motif of guilt and trying to say that young people are still learning what is right and wrong and what they learn from when they are wrong and all of their experiences will stay with them their whole life and make them better and more intelligent adults.

In the 1800's many of the men were fighting in wars so many children were missing a father figure and had to make up for it. This is what life in the March house was like for the little women who lived there. In Great Expectations Pips parents died when he was young so he is brought up by his sister and her husband, the blacksmith, who is intellectually equivalent to Pip. With these restrictions of parental issues the characters from both books were limited to their homes and were not supported if they went off on their own. Theses confinements led to the theme of wanting to go away from and essentially wanting to be a gentleman or lady. Pip ends up going to London and feeling ashamed of his family, and Jo goes to New York because she wants Beth and Laurie to fall in love but also to get away from home for awhile.

On of the main themes in Little Women and an important idea that is satirized in Great Expectations is being a good person leads to happiness. In Little Women, the character Amy turns down Fred Vaughn when he asks her to marry him, because even though he has money she doesn't love him. Also, the girls love each other to death and would never betray any of them and they all end up very happy in the end with good lives. Alcott uses positive examples to show this theme, while Dickens uses the opposite and shows the outcomes. Pip hates his home and is condescending towards people who he thinks is lower in social stature, causing people to dislike him and make him feel like he always needs more. He also spends a lot of money, and the cliche money can't buy love applies greatly to Pip because he always seems to be missing some important personality trait that would cause him to be happier. 

Second stage event analysis

As the first stage finished and the second stage began, the novel got excessively more boring, but many new characters were introduced. An event that has motifs hidden in its explanations is when Pip gets to London and is sent to stay with his old companion the Pale Young Gentleman, and it taught manners while eating dinner that he had never learned or thought of before. While these pointers are given to him, the Pale Young Gentleman, Herbert, is telling the story of Miss Havisham and why all of her clocks are stopped at a quarter to nine and why she always wears a faded wedding dress and has a rotting bridal cake on her table. Apparently her husband left her on their wedding day for her money, and her step brother that was kicked out of the family was involved, just to get her excessive amounts of money that her father left her when he passed away, but it is unclear the way he tells it. Some of the tips that Herbert gives Pip while he is telling Miss Havisham's story include not putting his fork all the way into his mouth and not tipping his wine glass upside down.

The scenes in stage one when Pip is playing at Miss Havisham is full of mystery because he doesn't know what was wrong with her, and as Herbert is telling the story more mysteries come up like why did her fiance do that and where is he now and what happened to her step brother. This motif, along with being a gentleman, comes up a lot in the book. The manners that Herbert teach Pip have to do with the motif of being a gentleman which is why Pip left his family in the first place. As Pip becomes more like a gentleman, his attitudes towards other people become critical and condescending. He only started becoming like this when he was criticized about what he looked like, then by wanting to be a gentleman. London has also encouraged him to treat others with less respect then they deserve.

Olivia's English Blog: Quotation Response

Olivia's English Blog: Quotation Response: "In Pip's quote, he is referring to his day at Miss Havisham's. If he never lived this day, he would have been a whole different person. It c..."

Pip's Quote

"Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

When Pip is thinking this, or looking back on that day and interpreting it, he means that what you do or think on just one day will change your life and perspective on something for the rest of your life. Like a chain, one link is connected to another which is connected to another and so on, but the first link is what every other link is built off of, and will have an influence on all of the other links. This is the day that he goes to Miss Havishams mansion and is humiliated my Estella about things that he had never thought about before. By being made fun of for his hands and boots, Pip changed his views on his appearance and his status, which has made him feel ashamed of his family, especially Joe because he is just a lowly blacksmith. In the following chapters he says things like, "It is a most terrible thing to feel ashamed of home...(106)" and "Now, is was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham  and Estella see it on any account," which he would have never said in earlier chapters, before the idea of being lower than somebody else was brought into his mind. These changes in Pip's personality and ideas are giving him bad thoughts about his home and Joe, which will turn out to be mistakes because Joe has always been there for him and he shouldn't feel ashamed of a person like that. For me, Pip was more enjoyable to read about when he didn't care about what other people thought of him because I really like Joe, and Pip is being annoying when he is embarrassed by him.

A day in my life that started a long chain of events is when my Mom took me to my first orchestra concert in fourth grade, played by the Olympia Symphony Orchestra. That was the day that I decided that I was going to play the violin, so my Mom signed me up for violin lessons and rented me a tiny violin. After a couple months of lesson I auditioned for Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia and got in and have been in it ever sense. This year I am in the top orchestra and have had an amazing experience playing with some phenomenal players from around Olympia. Violin has given me a lot of opportunities to play in front of crowds up to 2500 people (for a free concert of the Messiah)  Now, I spend a lot of my time with my violin and have made a lot of friends because of it!