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The house may be bleak, and so will your social life when you take on this epically long novel. Dickens is pretty hip, though, so you'll earn some...
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is about a young blacksmith boy (Pip) and his two dreams: becoming a gentleman and marrying the beautiful Est...
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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is about a young blacksmith boy (Pip) and his two dreams: becoming a gentleman and marrying the beautiful Estella. Luckily for Pip, Charles Dickens was persuaded to make the story end well, which means a happy ending for Pip. All that hard work paid off.
Transcript
- 00:04
Great Expectations, a la Shmoop. Pip pip, cheerio.
- 00:09
Charles Dickens' novels are not generally what you would call... uppers.
- 00:14
Anyone who's written a book called Bleak House could probably use a hug.
- 00:18
Great Expectations has an ambiguously happy ending...
- 00:21
...but only because its author was persuaded to end the novel on a positive note by a good
Full Transcript
- 00:27
friend of his.
- 00:28
Not everyone is in love with depressing endings like Dickens was.
- 00:35
If it was up to him, Katniss probably would have been the first one offed in The Hunger
- 00:39
Games. When readers finish Great Expectations, they
- 00:51
are left with a sense of optimism and romantic hopefulness.
- 00:55
After running all over the English marshes in Pip's... tiny shoes...
- 00:59
...it feels good to be granted a cheerful resolution to his story.
- 01:03
Why then was Dickens initially so intent on an unhappy ending?
- 01:08
Was he just a huge downer?
- 01:14
Was his own life so miserable that the only way he could make himself feel better was
- 01:18
to drag everyone else down with him?
- 01:20
He did have a rough childhood...
- 01:21
...and his wife divorced him shortly before the writing of this novel, which was rare
- 01:26
in those days...
- 01:26
...so he definitely had some reason to be grouchy.
- 01:29
Or, did he think it was genuinely the best way to end his story?
- 01:34
The book was titled Great Expectations... maybe he was trying to make a point about
- 01:39
having such expectations?
- 01:42
That, no matter how pure our intentions and no matter how hard we work...
- 01:47
...not everything is going to go our way, and you can't earn the love of someone who
- 01:54
isn't feeling it? Dickens wasn't a Hollywood screenwriter...
- 01:58
there wasn't the pressure back then to drive audiences to a theater.
- 02:02
Or... was Dickens just trying to surprise his readers, and throw them for a loop?
- 02:07
Great Expectations was written serially. In other words, it was released a chapter at
- 02:12
a time, rather than all at once.
- 02:14
Could it be that his readers were all anticipating a happy ending...
- 02:19
...and he didn't want to seem predictable? Which way are you leaning?
- 02:23
Morbid downer...
- 02:25
Conscientious writer...
- 02:26
... or lover of spontaneity? Shmoop amongst yourselves.
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