s in fact obtained what all have been seeking. He is suddenly what they all want to be, and they give him the deference they would themselves expect in his place. Money in turn deceives, in persuading one of his own merit in acquiring it, so Pip s money must reward his merit as Pumblechook loses no time in saying that his fortune «well deserved.» Pumblechook s servility and asininity are forgotten as he now seems a sensible, «prime fellow.» Once one has money then, from whatever source, the mystery or fortune in it fades away, and the money becomes a just reward to a deserving man. Luck has simply displayed good judgement.Great Expectations, Pip must survive the clashing influences of Joe s wholesome forge and the dark rottenness of Satis House.That mansion has the effect of quickening the hero s fatal desire for wealth and social place, of fixing until it is too late the illusions certain to be lost.dualism of place leads us immediately to London and country with their manifold associations; to the journeys, the unceasing movements to and fro that give such life and variety to Dickens s action; to the houses, seen from without and within, that tell us what the life and character of their inhabitants must be, given the surroundings in which they pass their lives. London is viewed throughout as a place of bewildering variety and contradiction, where «life and death went hand in hand; wealth and poverty stood side by side; repletion and starvation laid them down together. »Money returns us to London as the goal of ambition, a concentration of wealth and the desire for it, remaining a continuous, massive presence in Dickens s world.all that money can buy begins to flow into Pip s new life. It can buy the fulfillment of his «great expectations» in all their forms external to himself, in all their hollowness and final disillusion. Can it buy Estella too? What can money buy in women but the favors of a prostitute? What is Estella if she can be obtained for Pip by money alone? In the end, however, Estella will be his, only when money is lost and cannot be offered to her.Great Expectations the dream corrupts the dreamer, and the nearer to being realized, the more it corrupts. Pip repudiates those who have loved and aided him; he becomes idle and wasteful, he does no work for the money he spends; he loses his dignity as a man, becoming almost unfit for the society of others.Expectations is a fiction, not a statement of fact subject to analysis as such, so we must beware of reasoning about Pip and what he could or should have known outside the realm of Dickens s imagined possibilities. Pip is finally the beneficiary of a larg sum of money, about whose source he is at first mistaken, but which he is to accept under three main conditions: he must keep his name as it is; he must never inquire into the identity of his benefactor or try to discuss it in any way; he must enter at once on a course of education suited to his new circumstances.first of these conditions means that Pip will finally be saved. Pip s name reveals his common origin, and his being not anyone or anything in particular through its being spelled the same either way. He has started from the discontent inspired by Satis House, the desire to be a gentleman, the coming of great expectations and the acceptance of illusory values. Yet he finds that everything in his life may change except his name; he does not see that therefore his nature cannot change, that h...
