Charles Dickens Great Expectations

In Great Expectations, largely considered to be Dickens finest work, the author focuses on the happiness one can achieve without wealth and the fulfillment that comes with staying true to oneself. The novel's hero, Pip, a poor, good-hearted orphan who lives with his abusive sister and her kind blacksmith husband, suddenly finds he has a mysterious benefactor. But despite his newfound wealth, Pip's life does not live up to the "great expectations" he now has for it. He finds the girl of his dreams as a youngster, when the eccentric old Miss Havisham hires him to entertain her daughter, the beautiful Estella - but Estella only tortures him with her cold-heartedness. And there is Magwitch, the escaped convict who made Pip steal for him when Pip was a young boy, and who never forgot the favor... Great Expectations is a novel full of twists and turns, sweet triumphs, and bitter disappointments. It's a story about life's greatest lessons, one that can be read again and again.