"'Great Expectations' is remarkable for its symbolic use of setting. The hostile world of the cold and lonely marshes is an apt background for the meeting of the lonely child and the outcast convict, both of whom have found the world hostile.

"Satis House, with its decay and stopped clocks, represents not only the stopped world of Miss Havisham, and the corruption that Estella undergoes there, but also the corruption tthat the genteel world will bring to Pip.

"Mr Jaggers' office, full of reminders of the criminal world, is Mr Jaggers' life.

"Walworth is Wemmick's castle, not only because it has turrets and a drawbridge, but because it is his individuality, his humanity, which muyst be preserved and defended against the world of his employer and Little Britain.

"'Great Expectations' is perhaps Dickens' masterpiece. The structure is skillful, the irony brilliant, and the theme sustained. The hero, unlike his earlier counterparts, is no pasteboard figure, but a fallible human being in search of his identity.

"The comedy is less grotesque and the pathos less sentimental than in the earlier novels. In its exploration of guilt, the book anticiaptes a very modern theme. It may well turn out to be the most enduring, for the fastidious reader, of all the works of Dickens."

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I think I'll leave this at Caddies and hope someone with an interest in good classics will want to take this up and have a read.