Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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Whenever depressing/bleak novels are mentioned, I never hear this one brought up. It's been forever since I've read it (high school) but I remember it being very sad. Does anyone else like it? Do you consider it a dark or depressing novel?
 

S.J.

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I'm reading it in a few weeks, tell you then ;)
 

KTC

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God, no! I love this novel. I read it once a year. It makes me so happy. I find it uplifting. If you like it, I wonder if you have discovered Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints? It's her Great Expectations...one of my fav novels!
 

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I regard it as Dickens' masterpiece.

Sadly, it was also inadvertently the source of the worst literary travesty in recent years: A decade or so ago, Hollywood decided to make a version of GE, set in modern times. They then licensed a writer and publisher to release a "novelization" of the movie, titled:

Great Expectations.

You can probably find a copy in a cheap used bookstore somewhere, if you're interested.

caw
 

Mark W.

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It starts off depressing but it gets better after that. But then again it is Dickens and most all of his works have a dark tint to them.
 

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God, no! I love this novel. I read it once a year. It makes me so happy. I find it uplifting. If you like it, I wonder if you have discovered Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints? It's her Great Expectations...one of my fav novels!

I haven't come across that one, actually. I'll have to check it out.

And I do find bleak novels uplifting, but gosh...

***SPOILER ALERT***

...I really wanted them to get together, even if she was a jerk. I kept thinking she'd come around.

^ spoiler above, and just as a side note, I think it should be a rule that all potential-spoilers be in white font...
 

slindeman

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I didn't find it depressing or bleak at all. It has a lot of humor in it, memorable characters and scenes, and some twists at the end. Sure, Pip learns a good deal about life, often the hard way, but that is not depressing in itself.
 

SirOtter

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My favorite Dickens, and not at all his bleakest book. That would be Hard Times, IMO.
 

Camilla Delvalle

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Last year I read a lot of books, and Great Expectations was my favourite among them. Sure it is a gothic novel with that gloomy atmosphere, but it didn't make me depressed in the way that e.g. 1984 did. Great Expectations rather made me a bit happy. Maybe it is just known to be depressing because it was more so than contemporary books that were supposed to always end happily or something. My previous boyfriend found it very depressing though, and he wished that he had never read it.
 

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I loved it myself. Reading Great Expectations was one of the highlights of my young life and part of the reason I wanted to start writing. I'm just wondering was it unusual for me to read this novel at age 9? I loved it so much I read it three times in the next few years. Anyway, it was kind of depressing but not so much to take the joy away from it.
 

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I read Dickens in college but probably hadn't touched any of his works since and I've just now finished GE, and I didn't find it in the least depressing. Actually, parts of it are quite funny. Dickens was rather sarcastic.

The original ending was sadder than the altered version we've all read (where they meet in the garden of what was Satis House). I'm glad he changed it.
 

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Great Expectations strikes me as the Dickens novel that has best survived the passage of a century-and-a-half. Still fresh, and less digressive by today's reading standards than many of his other (and longer) novels.

I'd recommend GE as the novel to read for anyone who's never read any other Dickens.

caw
 

Billtrumpet25

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I especially enjoyed the madness of Ms. Havisham, considering I knew a person just like her.