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Great Expectations Morality Quotes

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Charles Dickens’ book Great Expectations is a coming of age novel that follows the life of nine year old Pip Pirrip into his adulthood. Throughout the course of his life Pip is faced with various difficult situations that help to shape his character. During those times there are specific moments where readers can see a shift in Pip’s moral character. The biggest shift in morality that Pip displays comes after he receives a large sum of money from an unknown benefactor. Pip goes from being a kind hearted kid into a judgmental, mean adult, and then back into a kind person. Dickens uses the moment of Pip receiving the money as a way to prove that money and material goods can have a negative effect on a person’s morality. At the beginning of …show more content…

The mere thought of money has started to turn Pip into a materialistic person which leads to him going down a bad path. Pip starts to notice how he is different from everyone who has money he says “I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too” (Dickens 56). This marks Pip trying to think about how he could change the people and other factors around him in order for him to blend in well with the high class society. Pip says that “I took the opportunity of being alone in the court-yard, to look at my coarse hands and my common boots” (Dickens 55). Pip begins to actually want to change his appearance in order to leave his old self behind, and even goes so far as to be ashamed of Joe, even though Joe treats him with nothing but love. Pip says “As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. Their influence on my own character, I disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all good. I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behavior to Joe” (Dickens 243). After Pip realizes that his money comes from a mere convict readers begin to see him revert back into his humbled, kind self again. He feels ashamed at what he has become and how his

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303 Words | 2 Pages

Chapter 7 Wealth/money/morality This quote shows that Tom is a racist. Knowing that this book was from the 1900s, we can guess its mood and how the situation goes. Since it shows that Tom is racist maybe this can show something that is related to Tom saying about other people. Understanding Gatsby is telling Tom that Daisy doesn’t like Tom.

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1616 Words | 7 Pages

Pip's fairy tale like view on the upper class is shattered when Magwitch, a convict, declares that he's Pip'd benefactor. Pip can't believe that a low-class criminal had wealth rivaling that of a wealthy gentleman's. It's a wake up call for Pip. (page 294) Magwitch's death also brings out Pip's softer, more sentimental side as Pip learns to love a person for who they are now and not what their standing or past was. (page 428) Pip sells all his belongings to pay for his debts and starts anew as a humble clerk at Clarriker and Herbert's company.

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1165 Words | 5 Pages

He also heavily influenced his attitude towards other people. He would never treat others with respect because that's how his dad would act. Pip is a high school student that is always smoking pot, cigarettes and drinking alcohol. He comes from a rough home life because his dad is aggressive towards everyone on the household especially Pip because he's constantly defying him. Pip has a younger brother named Mikey who is innocent yet he realizes how bad his father is.

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843 Words | 4 Pages

With Joe’s metaphor of metalsmiths, Dickens demonstrates the isolating effect of social class. Pip no longer works as a

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841 Words | 4 Pages

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of stranded boys survive on an island with no adults, soon their sense of morality falls apart and violence takes place. The loss of morality causes the boys to break the rules and become violent. Eventually, the boys become uncivilized and stop caring about their actions. They get to a point where they disregard logical thought and resort to violence without reason. As the story progresses, the absence of morality causes violence to reign among the boys.

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582 Words | 3 Pages

The theme of morality is one of the most important themes in F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby, written in 1925. Evidence that morality is the most important theme in the novel can be found when analysing the crash scene in which Myrtle dies, Gatsby’s death, and the story of his adolescence. Evidence that morality is the most important theme in Fitzgerald’s novel can be found when analysing the crash scene that results in Myrtle’s death Daisy is driving Gatsby’s car when the crash occurs. Morally she does not know what to do because there is a car in the other lane. To Daisy there is not time to think about the right or the the wrong choice to make.

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930 Words | 4 Pages

Pip is the only one who helps Magwitch in his time of struggle, he gives him food to eat and Brandy to drink; most importantly Pip gives him a file to break free of the iron cuffs around his ankles, “But he was down on the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding his own leg, which had an old chafe on it, and was bloody…” (18). From this moment Magwitch feels in debt to Pip and believes that this young boy will be capable of many things, so Magwitch decides to help Pip into his coming of age as gentleman. Pip is unaware that his benefactor is infact the convict he found in the woods many years before. He becomes informed when one night the convict appears at his door to tell him, “Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me

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754 Words | 4 Pages

During the novel Pip goes through many changes in his personality, as he is influenced by various people. As a very young child he is a innocent young boy who does not mind the fact he is relatively low ranking in society. At around the age of eight, he meets a beautiful girl named Estella who is of the upper class, Pip falls in love with her, and becomes ashamed of his background and his relatives because he has such a different life to her. When he is old enough he is bound apprentice to Joe. But he longs to be a gentleman, in a social class very different from a village blacksmith.

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1385 Words | 6 Pages

These feelings of guilt eventually lead Pip to live an undesirable life filled with guilt and shame, the one that he was so determined to leave behind as a young boy. Throughout his life in London, Pip always carried a strong feeling of guilt for becoming so wealthy, as if what he was striving for his whole life lost all of it’s worth once he achieved it. Pip felt bad for Joe especially, because they were now each part of a different social class, but despite the hardships that Pip underwent during his journey of seeking success, Joe said something very special, that always later reassured Pip when he felt ashamed, he said “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together… and one man’s a blacksmith, one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come… you and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywhere else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall see me no more in these in clothes” (Dickens, 224).

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906 Words | 4 Pages

Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations: The Values Taught In a Household In Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Dickens asserts that in Pip’s home, Joe and Mrs. Joe’s parenting, beliefs, and actions establish the both positive and negative values Pip learns in his adolescence[S]. Dickens employs Pip’s adolescence with Joe and Mrs. Joe, to claim the importance of guardians on ones childhood by repeating Mrs. Joe’s strictness and aggression, and Joe’s brotherly figure, reasonability, and transparentness. Dickens demonstrates the effects of one’s guardians to assert the fact that one’s values are shaped in the household. Shaping Pip’s values, Dickens display of Pip’s guardians molds Pip’s values in adolescence that will attribute to his personality

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919 Words | 4 Pages

Through her attempts she replaces her daughter’s heart with ice and breaks young men’s hearts. In Dickens’ bildungsroman Great Expectations, Pip and Miss Havisham’s morally ambiguous characterization helps develop the theme, that one needs to learn to be resilient. The internal struggles that Pip experiences through the novel, reveal his displeasure to his settings and

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1110 Words | 5 Pages

In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens tells the story in the perspective of a young boy growing up in England during the Victorian Era. Philip “Pip” Pirrip is the protagonist, where we discover his life experiences and expectations through his narration. Pip’s sister, Mrs. Joe, and her husband, Mr. Joe, greatly influence his childhood. He meets many people later on who teaches him that not everyone will be happy and what it really means to have “great expectations”. Through Pip’s journey, Dickens suggests that happiness becomes achievable if one learns to accept and fix their flaws.

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1496 Words | 6 Pages

With humble beginnings as an apprentice blacksmith, under the loving and caring wing of his guardian Joe, Pip leaves to become a gentleman after receiving a fortune from a mysterious benefactor. He then forgets Joe and loses his humanity, feeling ashamed of common, backwards Joe. After Pip’s rise to the upper class halts when he plummets into debt, like the father in the “Prodigal Son”, Joe welcomes Pip back and forgives Pip for his foolish actions. Through Pip’s redemption, Pip fully realizes the flaws of social class and the conceited notions of society, reciting,“I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone back to Biddy now, for any consideration: simply, I suppose, because my sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every consideration. I could never, never, never, undo what I had done”(Dickens 169).

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741 Words | 3 Pages

Additionally, Pip's immaturity is truly evident when he asks Biddy if she could teach Joe everything she knows because he is ashamed of his lack of knowledge. Lastly, as Pip comes into his expectations, he is blessed with more and more money. Pip receives an endless supply of money which causes him to spend munificently. He spends all of his money on self-centered luxuries to impress the other young rich gentlemen.

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1598 Words | 7 Pages

In that way, it is possible to get a happy ending even after experiencing something similar to what Pip felt. In the end, Pip became friends with Estella, even after knowing that she was the cause for his change which lead to all his misery in life. A moral theme that was taught in Great Expectations is to not change yourself for anyone or any reason. It is important to always keep your individuality and not to be susceptible to being swayed by someone. Overall, everyone should be their own individual person and not change for

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