Great Expectations: Thoughts on Reading

Great Expectations is the second unabridged novel of Charles Dickens's that I have read, following my reading of A Tale of Two Cities two years ago. From my experience with each of these books, I can say that while I do not always appreciate Dickens's style of writing and diction, I have great respect for his ability to write stories with engaging plot. I found this to be especially so in the former, but not quite as much so in the latter; I thought that the Pip's adventures were much less well-defined in terms of a plot-line, and thus less enthralling. This and the diction were my main problems with the novel, along with the fact that neither of the endings to the story satisfied me as good closure. On the positive side, I felt that the book had an excellent range of characters and corresponding character development. My favorite character was Mr. Jaggers, with Magwith, Mr. Wemmick, and Biddy following close behind. I had a good deal less sympathy for Pip, mainly due to his actions and thoughts in the center of the novel.

With Dickens's literature, I find that to fully understand what I am reading, I need to concentrate intently and be constantly deciphering what is on the page. In other books, I can take in the story with my attention partially elsewhere, but with Dickens, if my mind is drifting, so will my comprehension. This being said, I at first found it rather difficult to fit the reading assignments into my schedule, especially with the soccer season taking up 2 new hours of my time every day. On one day, I was so busy that I fell slightly behind, but luckily the weekend allowed me to catch up relatively easily. Realizing this, I soon began to read a bit ahead during the weekends, so that I could afford to take a day off on a busy day during the week and still be on track. When the story progressed to the point that a great amount of action was occurring and a great number of mysteries were being resolved, about a week before the deadline, I decided to come back for annotating later and read the book all the way through, as I would for a book that I was reading for pleasure. I confined myself to my room and spent a morning reading the final 10 chapters. I am now very glad that I made this choice, as I was able to read without interruption or sudden stops. This most definitely helped me to better both understand and enjoy the story.