Commentaire the great expectations

« take on an adult point of view on his own deed.

It seems that he is now older and looking back on past events : “ So I called myself Pip” (l.2); it shows that the story is retrospective.

When looking on this former events, his behaviour is often characterized by adjectives linked to childhood, and which seems here derogatory : “infant tongue” (l.1), “childish conclusion” (l.10).

Finally, one can easily notice that the story is not narrated by a young boy, but rather by a young boy who tries to give the impression he is an adult. He is using complicated vocabulary which one would usually associate with an adult, such as “explicit” (l.2), “my first most vivd and broad impression” (l.18), “raw afternoon” (l.19).

As a matter of fact, he is trying to act just as an adult would do.

Not only is he using sophisticated vocabulary, but also thinking and making deductions on what he sees.

Indeed, he is able of analyzing situations and going from causes to consequences.

For instance, he is telling the reader that he is lead to conclude that Pirrip is his family name, and the way of doing it is the same as an adult would.

He is exposing facts and clues : “on the authority of his tombstone and my sister” (l.4) and then, making deductions just as a grown-up.

Also, one can notice that he is calling her sister by her courtesy, which shows that he is not only respecting her, but also emphasizing on his will to act like an adult. By willing to act, think and speak as an adult, Pip tries to improve himself, because one cannot notice that he actually has great expectations, in victorian meaning, for his future.

But he still is remaining a child, and it is showed by the narrator's use of images of inanimate objects to describe the physical appearance of his parents; fact that he even admit being “unreasonable” (l.7) and “childish” (l.10). This element shows a failure of empathy on the narrator's part, but it can also appear as a deshumanization : the parent's position in life pressures them to rather look like a thing, instead of a humain being.

When Pip is telling us that his “first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones”, is he becoming a kid devoided of reason again, or is he the sitting duck of the pressure set by society which implies that an institution such as the class system deshumanizes some people ?   Being a classic work of Victorian litterature, one cannot forget that this kind of novel tend to be idealized. »