Great Expectations by Charles Dickens examines themes of isolation, guilt and social injustice.
Augustine Martin discusses the opening scenes of Great Expectations and the three central themes that run throughout the entire novel.
The story centres around the struggles of Pip, an orphan boy alone in the world with a lack of identity.
Another theme is the sense of guilt that Pip feels throughout his life for helping a convict. There is a sense of complicity in a sordid world beyond the law and respectability.
There is also a theme of social injustice symbolised through the use of imagery such as poverty, prison ships and chains.
Concentrating on the themes of identity and guilt which run side by side throughout the novel Augustine Martin believes,
Pip spends his life in fact, through the novel, searching for proper values to live by, proper relationships with people, a way of life which will give meaning to his life.
Pip has a life plagued by guilt and the ghost of the convict.
Growing up, Pip was given little sense of his own worth or value. His older sister, who he lives with, looks down on him and abuses him. The only warmth for Pip world from his sister's husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith.
This episode of 'Telefís Scoile: English Literature' was broadcast on 1 December 1969. The presenter is Augustine Martin.
'Telefís Scoile' was an educational television programme that gave school lessons in maths, science and literature. It was first broadcast on 4 February 1964 and continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
