Great Expectations
讀書樂編號：4260
推介人： 黃韻玲校友
Pip, a young orphan, lives with his sister and her husband, Joe Gargery. One day he is hired by Miss Havisham to company her daughter, Estella, who soon falls in love with him. Afterwards, he spends even more years to be a trainee to Joe so as to grow up. Then Pip's life changes by a London lawyer informing Pip that he would be the "great expectations" of handsome property and be trained to be a gentleman. Pip travels to London and finds Herbert Pocket notifying him Miss Havisham's past and how Estella was raised to take revenge on the male side of life. He is then receives an education in manners, cultured society and so on. When he adapts the new environment, he finds himself in the same circles as Estella. When Joe visit Pip and Herbert deliver important message, Pip is embarrassed to the point of hostility by Joe's unlearned ways. Afterwards, Magwitch, a escaped convict he helped, was introduced to him, which changes his world. Pip must deal with different challenges from now on, whereas he learns truths casting serious aspersion on his eagerly embraced values and finds that he cannot recover the important things. Pip conspired to smuggle Magwitch but all plots turned out to be in vain as Compeyson guides police to the ship Magwitch is on. Magwitch and Compeyson fights and consequently Compeyson dies and Magwitch is arrested. Unfortunately, Magwitch dies but before that, he learns that his daughter is still alive. Lastly, Pip travels with Herbert in the Middle East. Pip meets Estella on the streets. She has remarried to a doctor after the death of his ex-husband. Granted that Pip knows that he could not have her, Pip is glad to know she is not cold-hearted anymore. The novel ends with Pip stating he could see that "suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be."
