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Money In Charles Dickens Great Expectations

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An anonymous person once said, “Don’t let yourself be controlled by these three things: your past, people, and money.” In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens uses money to show how it can make people do anything and completely change a person into someone that is almost unrecognizable. Charles Dickens uses money as a motif to show how it can change people for the worse through their actions, friends, and opinions. Dickens uses money to show how it can change people through their actions in the book. When Pip had found out about his fortune, he went to the tailor shop and the tailor, Mr. Trabb, doesn’t think much of it until he mentions his fortune and says, “‘I am going up to my guardian in London,’ said I, casually drawing some guineas …show more content…

When Pip goes back to the Satis House for the first time since he left for London, he talks with Estella in the garden and she says, “Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your companions” (Dickens 251). This shows that because of his fortune and the money he got, he has changed his friends from lower class people like Joe and Biddy, to gentleman like Herbert and the Finches. When Pip was little, he was best friends with Joe. But as he got older, they started to drift apart. He used to want to become a blacksmith like Joe but as he got older he saw how money could change his life through Miss Havisham and Estella. He started despising being a blacksmith and wanted to become a gentleman very badly. When he inherits the fortune, he becomes snobby towards Joe and Biddy because he has all of the money he got and. Once he gets to London, he gets new friends like Herbert and starts to get together with self indulging people such as the Finches who don’t care about their money and basically throw it away. He changes his friends to other gentleman in London and doesn’t care about his old friends anymore becomes ashamed of them because of their lack of wealth. Because of the fortune and money that Pip inherited, he has changed his friends and has switched to a worse version of

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