The Theme of the Quest of Fatherhood in Charles Dickens's Novel Great Expectations

Abstract

This research depends on the critical analysis method for the main events and characters in the novel. It assumes that the novelist Charles Dickens, in Great Expectations, like in his other novels, keeps on his attack on some specific abuses and injustices in the social system in England during the 19th century. From the early beginning to the end of the novel, there is a parallel and simultaneous quest. The central character, Pip is an orphan boy who needs and unconsciously searches for a father, and the convict Ebel Magwitch who has lost his daughter, is looking for fatherhood. The fate of the orphan child is very strangely linked to the chased fugitive criminal. The paper consists of a general introduction about the novelist and his remarkable career followed by three sections: the first section briefly reviews some of the previous studies about the novel, the second explains the main characters and the plot of the novel, the third discusses the main hypothesis of the research and a conclusion which summarizes, briefly, the findings of the research.