《远大前程》中的悲剧主题

关键词  查尔斯·狄更斯，《远大前程》，悲剧主题
1  Introduction 1
2  Tragic Theme in Great Expectations 2
2.1  The Love Tragedy.2
2.2  The Disillusionment of Great Expectations.5
2.3  The Tragic Fate of Nobodies.9
Conclusion12
Acknowledgements.13
References.14

Charles Dickens (1812~1870) is one of the most outstanding critical realist writers in Victorian England. During his whole life, he creates 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, among which the famous novels are The Adventures of Oliver Twist(1839), A Christmas Carol(1843), David Copperfield(1850), Bleak House(1853), Hard times: For These Times(1854), Little Dorrit(1857), A Tales of Two Cities(1859), Great Expectations(1861). Many of them are so popular that are adapted into films for many times, especially Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. His works evoke life in the English society at that time because his inspiration for the character comes from the real life. His novels disclose the social abuses and contractions through the development of the story, which also carries a deep research on the mentality of that age. The readers could feel that Charles Dickens has a clear cut on what to love and what to hate and has a strong sympathy for people from the bottom society.
Charles Dickens’s vivid description of the underworld of the English society of that time heads from his unhappy childhood. When he was a child, his family was fairly well-off that he could go to private school. But it didn’t last too long for his father was unable of financing and was soon put into prison because of out of debt. His whole family had to move to prison to live with his father. Charles Dickens had to work as an apprentice in a factory for over ten hours a day to support his family. This trying experience he suffered from not only offers him a close eye on the bottom society, but also serves as fodder and muse for his novels. Luckily, the financial condition of his family became better then he could receive education in the school again. Overall Charles Dickens didn’t receive too much formal education but he never gave up teaching himself. When he was twenty, he began to work as a journalist. Then he started to publish his article on different journals and later became well-known for The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
Great Expectations is one of later novels written by Charles Dickens who becomes more mature in ideas, with such highly evaluation “the most perfectly constructed and perfected written of all Dickens’s works”. (Shi, 2007: 1) As the novels about orphans he writes before, he creates many simple and kind characters with minute descriptions and deep sympathy, such as Joe, Pip and Biddy.
Great Expectations is so famous that many critics try to analyze it from different aspects, such as critical realism, symbolism, characters, and so on, among which, the analysis of its theme is one of the most important subjects. As for themes, there are many different kinds of thoughts. For example, the researcher K Yoshida points out that self-help is very significant in this novel. “Self-help gave people of working class and middle class the advice that they should live by indefatigable industry and perseverance." (Yoshida, 2008: 43) Li Shirong believes that the growth of Pip is an important theme in Great Expectations. Shi Hongying, the author of Women tragedy in Patriarchal Society considers that women tragedy is one of the significant themes of Great Expectations and analyzing women images in this novel could reveal the women tragedy of Victorian Age in patriarchal society. Women tragedy is one of the tragedies and there are also many other tragedies in Great Expectations. And this paper will analyze the tragic theme of Great Expectations.
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