As you try to reflect and recall those
moments in Great Expectations—scenes that would remain etched in
your memory for a long time—some images loom large. And these scenes also
happen to be closely knit with Charles Dickens' great themes: poverty,
injustice, crime and so on. The actions of the escaped convict Magwitch who torn
by hunger "was handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious
manner—more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent
hurry, than a man who was eating it" and who was "gobbling mincemeat,
meatbone, bread cheese, and pork pie all at once, staring distrustfully while he did so
at the mist all round us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to
listen"; Pip's last look at the peaceful and quiet village as he leaves for the city
to become a `gentleman,' when "the light mists were solemnly rising, as if
to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all
beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob
I broke into tears"; the scenes at the eerie Satis House with Miss
Havisham—"one of the greatest witches in the
history of fairy tales"—which have a
quality that makes the flesh creep; Magwitch's dying moments; the
melodramatic scene where Orlick is about to kill Pip (the writer's love of the
theatrical is at its best here as the reader waits with bated breath); these
and many more scenes come to your mind, which are best described only if you
look at the novel in its entirety. Great
Expectations, no doubt, has all the
ingredients of an action packed thriller.
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