Great Expectations

Paper Topics for Great Expectations

Choose one of the topics below and write a paper of about 5 pages (double spaced, 12 pt font, 1-inch margins, etc. etc.). All papers should be built on significant textual evidence—at least 3 close readings of passages from the book—and should be organized around a single central argument (aka a thesis).Click here to get more on this essay.!!! 

  I.    Work Builds Character

Pick two or three characters from Great Expectations and discuss their relationship to work, money, and social class. What do these characters teach us about life under developing Victorian capitalism? Why does Dickens give each character the duties, activities and behaviors that he does? Pay attention both to the local, descriptive particulars of your characters and to their broader role in the plot and setting of the novel. Why does Dickens choose these particular personages to depict the England of his day?

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  II.    Crime Pays   

Address the themes of crime, punishment and guilt in the book. What specific relationships does Dickens set out between personal morality and the laws of society, between private guilt and criminal guilt? What role do prisons (and prison colonies) play in both the novel and the social world it depicts? How does Dickens use theft, escape, concealment, deception, and acts of physical violence to structure and punctuate the plot, and how do these “criminal” acts relate to the everyday activities of the characters? What is the relationship between crime and capitalism? How does crime pay in Great Expectations, and how do its characters pay for their crimes?

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