Ben Lattanzio
11/2/13
Ms.Pilleralla
English

The ending of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations was very successful because it demonstrates Pip’s spiritual reassessment. The theme in the book that further explains this is power can corrupt. The author uses characterization and irony to help the theme which leads to the success of the book. In Great Expectations, Dickens uses characterization to help Pip get a spiritual reassessment. He shows Pip as an innocent child in the beginning of the book who has been affected by a convict in a negative way. The convict had scared Pip into stealing from his sister and Joe. Pip than became self conscious of his problems with himself and his place in the social classes after meeting Miss Havisham and Estella. Pip wanted to be a gentleman and become uncommon. When Pip learned that someone wanted to give him money and make him a gentleman and, he was very happy to take the money. Pip began acting like how he thought gentlemen acted, which caused Pip to be mean to Joe and everyone else in his old social class and town. As he was becoming a gentleman, he realized that everything he thought about being a gentleman was actually false. When he learned about the origin of where Estella was from and her parents, he saw that she had come from people below him. Pip also learned that the person who was giving him the money was the person who had made him steal from his family all those years before. The convict was his sponsor and that changed Pip’s views. Pip’s character went from innocent to arrogant due to the amount of money he got, and by the end of the book he matured and came to the realization that social class meant nothing. The author used irony in the book to bring the successful ending. In the book Pip believes that to be a gentleman he has to look down on people who are poor, like Joe. Pip was mean to Joe because Joe was illiterate and was