爱华网"Great Expectations" has been considered to be one of Charles Dickens’ most mature and relatively late works. Having experienced a wealth of human life, Dickens got a profound understanding of human-being, the surrounding environment and his life experiences while all his mature thinking and understanding were summarized into the book "Great Expectations".
The original meaning of the work’s title in fact is a heritage, but when it was translated into Chinese it gave me an impression that the title shows the hero of the story had Great Expectations. However, reading over the book I realized that this "Great Expectations" takes an ironic band――it should be said that the theme of this work not only told the story of orphan Pip who wanted to be the ideal first-class disillusionment. If one does think so, he holds a wrong understanding of the great significance why Dickens creative the work.
The hero Pip lived with his sister’s family. Though their life was hard, Pip didn’t wish to be a first-class person his vision was to be a blacksmith like his brother-in-law, his sister’s husband. The reason why he changed his mind and was eager to be a first-class person later was the changing of environment――he met Miss Harvisham, Estella and some other complex people. As we know one of Dickens's philosophy thoughts is environment takes a deep impact to humans’ ideological and the story expresses his view that different environment creates different people.
In short, I think the work was not arbitrarily written, but was based on the 10 works before aggregating Dickens’ thoughts. What is more, Dickens had put his outlook on life, his views of philosophy and ethics into the great creation.
