Thoughts On Reading

       My personal reaction to the book was a relatively positive one.  It was an intuitive, relatively understandable, and even a little humorous at parts novel.  I thought the story ended on a pretty bad note, what with Estella leaving Pip and Joe leaving Pip and Biddy leaving Pip and even Pip losing all his money.  But when I got over that fact, I realized Pip was content and happy being just the way he was before being a gentleman, he didn't need all of that money, wealth, and status, he just needed to be okay with himself.  I didn't particularly enjoy Dicken's as an author not only becasue his books are just way too long, it's because the language he uses occasionally is just wierd and a bit misunderstandable.  Other than that, he's the best author of the century I guess.  I didn't sympathize with Pip basically becasue he was such a jerk to everyone but I did like Herbert a lot becasue of his likeable, funny outlook towards life.  I also enjoyed Estella near the beginning after reading the ending, basically because she thought she was all that, when she was just a poor bum of a baby sent out on her butt.  Slightly cynical, I know, but painfully true.  A mystery i could solve from the beginning was that Magwitch was going to be the benefactor of Pip.  It was just so obvious, and in a way, that man was the only person Pip really helped out, ever. Overall, the book wasn't the most fantastical experience in the whole world, but I guess it was better than staring at my Iphone for 12 hours a day.                
       Great Expectations was a relatively annoying book that had to be constantly read every night.  That was my first reaction to the book when I picked it out of my dusty bookshelf and cracked it open.  It was honestly worse than the Chinese Water Torture reading the first 100 pages but when I got to the second act of the book, I noticed it was getting even more boring than before and I was falling behind.  A week ago, I read about 150 pages of the book to catch up and I had never felt so confident before, staying ahead of the game, being an overachiever, how you feel when you have everything done, content.  Then Tuesday came...

Photo Connection

I think this picture represents a lot of Pip's actions that have been happening lately in Great Expectations.  I know its not the greatest picture but it signifies Pip's growing ignorance towards his close friends in the beginning of his life, Biddy and Joe.  His expectations are ridiculously unrealistic and for some reason he thinks he is better than everyone else based on his good fortune and coincidence.  I have not been impressed with Pip lately, and I don't think he's going to change either.

Making Connections

       A few months ago, I read a fascinating novel entitled "Life of Pi" and I found it to be a unique, one of a kind story unlike any other.  After reading almost two-thirds of Great Expectations, I seem to have found these two stories to be so interlaced and so similar that I almost immediately knew the relation after reading a good 30 or so pages.
       Life of Pi starts out a lot like Great Expectations, there are three sections, and in the first, the protagonist, Pi, remembers his childhood and reminisces, talking about the good and the bad events he experienced.  When Pi was born, he was born a Hindu (religion has a huge correlation with Great Expectations and Pip's expectations), but he begins to understand and follow Christianity and Islam as well.  This has a huge relation to Pip and his expectations because him and Pi both want more out of life than they can really get.  Three religions seems like a lot, but Pi benefits from each one, seeing different aspects of life and overall, understanding that God is different in each one.  God is really Pi's expectations.
       Not only is that just a fraction of the book, I found the relevancy of Great Expectations and Life of Pi to be tremendous, and I thought they related to each other so much, because our expectations are always so high for ourselves.  It shows in other books as well, this was just the only book I've read in the past few months.
             :)

Second Stage

       Throughout the second stage of Great Expectations, its really shocking how much Pip has changed since the beginning.  He's almost the complete opposite of that poor, innocent, boy we were so kindly introduced to a couple weeks ago.  Now, he's an almost sad, unrelenting shell of the boy he used to be and has changed to a greedy, high and mighty "gentleman".  In Chapter 24, when Pip asks Mr. Jaggers for some money and Mr. Jaggers offers 50 pounds, Pip asks for less, but when Jaggers says 5 pounds, which is (was) a ton of money, Pip asks for more.  

       For example, this shows not only his ever increasing greediness, but his ignorance of how lucky he is.  He spends all his time moping about and worrying about things but if he really wanted to be a gentleman, he'd do it without being such a pain.

       

Pip's Quote

       I think Pip is trying to state in this confusing sentence if you remember a day in your life when you did something, and you were bound to it, there was nothing you could do to get out of it, you were trapped.  Pip is obviously referring to his apprenticeship to Joe, and how he felt right after it was given to him, shameful and indecisive.  His attitude towards the apprenticeship is a drastic change from the first half of the first act to the second part.  From Chapters 1-9, he imagines being a blacksmith a wonderfully glorious thing, something admirable, thanks to Joe.  Pip's judgement towards Joe really decided his wanting to become a blacksmith because he was the one person that was a real friend to him.  In Chapters 10-16, Pip's frequent visits to Miss Havisham's cloud his judgement towards becoming a blacksmith and he feels ashamed, thanks to Estella's cruelly judgmental remarks.  He wants to become a gentleman in these chapters, and I think that its totally ridiculous he does.  He expects that he deserves something better than everyone else, but that's not how life works, Pip doesn't realize that yet.
       A life altering day for me was when i joined the crew team I guess.  It was over three years ago and the first time I got out on the water I got an ejector and I flew out of the boat in the water.  It was pretty scary at the time but my friends still make fun of me still about it.  Anyways, I've been doing it for a while now, and not only is it a hard sport, but I'm committed, and it definately has lead to a chain of events throughout my life.