those without money tend to be better people than those who have it or those who are bent on attaining it. Getting money raises the question of the means used to obtain it and the source from which money comes. The pursuit of money clashes with one of Dickens s declared moral absolutes: work. Nothing of value can be had without work.moral problems raised by money are numerous and contradictory. Money tends to corrupt when it is divorced from work, when it is obtained solely by chance, by merely shrewd business operations, by inheritance, or undeserved acquisition. Ruin lies ahead, he warns, for young men who depend not on their own efforts but on their «expectations.» Case against money is not complete until its role in fostering illusion is exposed, as in the moral realism of the title, Great Expectations . That title suggests the disillusion of the author and raises great human questions, symbolic either of defeat or acceptance of things as they are. Here Dickens s attack on nineteenth century optimism reaches its fulfillment. He questions the very nature of the age that gave hope to the young, that roused Hazlitt s feeling of youth s immortality, when it was glorious to be alive, when an obscure Corsican might become emperor of France, and when an impoverished English artisan might attain to unimagined riches and a seat in the House of Lords., the nineteenth century created illusions destined to be lost and inspired «great» expectations. Once again, the villain is money, whose very existence creates illusion.When one has money, from whatever source, illusions are possible. So Pip recovers his moral dignity only after he has lost everything he once considered precious.accuses the age of encouraging illusion in the young and then frustrating their hopes, of inspiring excessive ambition and then requiring calculated acts of cruelty to fulfill that ambition, of depriving youth of its grace, vitiating its generous sentiments.is led from a wholesome past into a corrupt future. Selfish meanness of spirit is encouraged, as youth is led to cherish desires that are false because they are satisfied by money alone, without work.lives as a parasite, using people who love him as instruments. He makes disastrous choices, shamefully betraying primary human relationships because the laws of the world demand the sacrifice of those who have nothing to contribute to the fulfillment of his «great expectations.» These wholesome relationships are doomed, the moral and human price exacted as Pip journeys to London, the city which symbolizes the ultimate illusion, the one that encompasses all other illusions.of this is suggested by the title, which introduces a book that is quite unlike any other among the fifteen of Dickens s novels. The earlier works tend to resemble the eighteenth century s loose, semi-biographical tales that have for a title the protagonist s name.Yet even without the hero s name in the title, Great Expectations is intensely biographical, reaching out from the career of a single youth to comment upon the world.finds that money, like original genius, radiates energy. Once acquired, it transforms a man s position, elevates him in the general esteem, and gives a new value and dignity to his opinions. It changes all of his relationships with others, inviting deference, servility on all sides. Money, being what all others have desired, has the effect of changing Pip from an object of contempt or indifference to one who ha...
