This is for my AP English class. This is my very first draft--I mean I've done zero editing. So, some of the things you see will be changed, but you may be as harsh as you like. I need the most help with the conclusion (which doesn't exist) and the thesis (which is basically the first paragraph instead of one sentence).
Have at it!
Great Expectations
The pages of an intriguing novel are filled with conflict, drama, and an ever-changing plot. There are a great many ways to achieve this result, but one of the most effective ways is to use the literary term of irony. Great Expectations is a great example of such a novel because Charles Dickens uses all three forms of irony to their full extent.
What a character says can be used as a form of characterization, labeling him or her as a self-interested opportunist or as a cold hearted person. In Great Expectations, Dickens makes Mr. Pumblechook a despicable character through verbal irony. During the Christmas dinner at the House of Joe, Pumblechook compares Pip to a pig, but, after Pip receives his money and expectations, Pumblechook praises Pip and calls himself Pip’s first benefactor. Irony drips from every disgusting word Pumblechook says about his influence on Pip. He had never before said or even thought a good thing about Pip, and every time he calls himself Pip’s earliest patron, it is a lie.
Dickens gives another great example of verbal irony in chapter 38. During the argument between Havisham and Estella, the latter asks the former what she would have, and Havisham answers “love”, to which Estella replies “you have it”. This is completely ironic because Estella is, at this point, incapable of love, and, if she was able to love, Havisham would not be the recipient.
Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens places some of his characters more often in ironic situations than others. Estella is one of them. Besides saying ironic things, she, herself, is an irony. She is a beautiful woman, graced with wealth, status, and provisions of every sort. Yet, she is as cold as ice. Because of all the things she has, one would thing that she would be happy, appreciative, and loving, but she is bitter, indifferent towards her benefactor, and malicious towards those who would love her, namely Pip.
Pip is another character that Dickens places in ironic situations. The title, Great Expectations, refers to him, but Pip has none. He starts as a poor, lower class child with no expectations except to maybe apprentice in Joe’s forge. Then, an unknown benefactor gives him the opportunity to become a gentleman. This change in fortune is ironic, but what is more so it that never once are Pip’s true “expectations” revealed to him. He squanders his money in a haphazard life, leading to Dickens’s next piece of irony: his fall from grace. Pip may not have been expected to ever receive the money, but, once he does, the reader might very well expect a “rags to riches” finish. Dickens does not do this though, as he takes away Pip’s status and once again shows the reader his mastery of irony.
Along with the situational irony of Pip’s “great expectations”, comes the dramatic irony of his belief that Havisham is his benefactor. There are hints, there are suggestions, but never once does anyone come out and say that she is the source of Pip’s new wealth. Then when the convict, Magwitch, appears and confesses to be the true benefactor, Pip is crushed, a great conflict is created, and dramatic irony reigns.
Magwitch’s character is full of irony. He is convict who has become very rich, and he is a banished man who has risked death to visit someone who does even know he’s coming. All of these are things that one would not expect a person to do. The greatest irony that Dickens gives to Magwitch though is the wish to create a gentleman. Not being a gentleman, in fact, being reviled by gentleman, one would not think that Magwitch would want to create one, but nothing is more important to him then Pip becoming a gentleman. He gives Pip his life, literally, but it doesn’t make Pip a gentleman. What is most ironic though, is that the reader knows that Estella, the woman of irony, the gentlewoman, the lady, is Magwitch’s daughter. Magwitch has sacrificed his life to make a gentleman. What he does not know, until his deathbed when Pip tells him, is that he has created a gentlewoman. All this time, he was striving for what he already had, and he did not know it until the very end, when it was too late to see his creation in bloom.
Within the pages of Great Expectations, irony is used to give insight to characters, propel the plot, and interest the reader. Dickens expertly weaves ironic words, situations, and revelations into his story and makes it all the better.
