Study Questions & Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. Discuss Pip
as both a narrator and a character. How are different aspects of
his personality revealed by his telling of his story and by his
participation in the story itself?
2. What role
does social class play in
Great Expectations? What
lessons does Pip learn from his experience as a wealthy gentleman?
How is the theme of social class central to the novel?
3. Throughout
the novel, Pip is plagued by powerful feelings of guilt and shame,
and everywhere he goes he tends to encounter symbols of justice—handcuffs, gallows,
prisons, and courtrooms. What is the role of guilt in the novel?
What does it mean to be “innocent”?
Suggested Essay Topics
1. What significance does the
novel's title, Great Expectations, have for the
story? In what ways does Pip
have “great expectations”?
2. For much of Great
Expectations, Pip seems to believe in a stark division
between good and evil, and he tends to classify people and situations
as belonging to one extreme or the other: for instance, despite
their respective complexities, he believes that Estella is good
and the convict is evil. Yet, both socially and morally, Pip himself
is often caught between extremes; his own situation rarely matches
up to his moral vision. What is the role of moral extremes in this
novel? What does it mean to be ambiguous or caught between extremes?
3. Discuss the character of Miss
Havisham. What themes does she embody? What experiences have made
her as she is? Is she a believable character? How does she relate
to Pip and Estella?
4. Think about the novel's two
endings—the “official” version in which Pip and Estella are reunited
in the garden and the earlier version in which they merely speak
briefly on the street and go their separate ways. Which version
do you prefer? Which version seems more true to the thematic development of
the novel? Why?
