Great Expectations
Uploaded by kiki0013 on Mar 30, 2000
The story begins in a village near the marshes where a young boy named Pip lives. Because his parents are dead, he lives with his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery and her husband Joe who’s a blacksmith and Pip’s trusted friend. Pip doesn’t have much of a future, he’s destined to become Joe’s apprentice and eventually a blacksmith. Then, Pip meets a convict out on the marshes. It seems like nothing important, despite it being frightening, but this meeting will change his life forever.
The convict asks him to bring some food. Pip, fearing for his life, steals some food from his house, brings them to the convict and doesn’t see him again.
Later, a stranger will show up in the Three Jolly Bargemen. He’ll scare Pip a little because he reminds him of the convict. Pip thinks he might be in danger, but instead, the stranger gives him two one-pound notes. At that time, not much connection is shown between the notes and the convict on the marshes, but later discoveries indicate that it was the convict that had sent the man with the notes.
Suddenly, there’s a twist of fate. Pip’s invited to play at Miss Havisham’s. Miss Havisham is a wealthy old lady who lives uptown in a large, gloomy house. Next to the house is an old, decrepit brewery and a garden overrun with weeds, both remnants of better times. The interior of the house isn’t much looked after either. The drapes are closed as to block as much sunlight as possible; the only light inside is that of candles, and cobwebs decorate the furniture.
Miss Havisham turns out to be an elderly woman in an old bridal dress that was once white, but has now faded to pale yellow. Most objects in the house were once white actually, but had also faded. And a remarkable fact was that all the clocks were stopped exactly at 8.40 A.M. Pip later finds out that Miss Havisham was abandoned by her fiancé at the altar at that time and straight after that, she had all the clocks stopped.
Miss Havisham was heartbroken and turned into a bitter, cold woman. She stayed indoors, stopping the clocks and leaving everything the way it was on the day she was to be married. She stayed in the darkness, not seeing any sun or anything outside her mansion called Satis House. Satis stood for “enough”. As if to...