If Charles Dickens would have written a book called Being a true gentleman for semi-smart lower class boys with girls they need to impress and Pip had read it, this would have made his life much easier. Then maybe he could've realized the true virtues that make a gentleman, and this book wouldn't have been written, and English classes all over the globe could have read something less grueling. Sadly for some this didn't happen, and Dickens had to write this moral-teaching novel about true gentlemaness. A true gentleman, as Dickens would say, would be a person who is compassionate and works hard in life. At the end of the novel, ...view middle of the document...
When Pip inherits Magwitch's fortune and is training to be a gentleman, he doesn't labor very hard at all, and this causes him to not achieve accurate gentleman status, even though he is in his special training and has a great amount of cash.A true gentleman in Dickens' eyes would also be compassionate and loving. Joe can also help argue this point. Joe had always been kind and caring, no matter what pain Pip caused him. For example: even though Pip is horrid to Joe after he inherits his money, Joe still comes to his side to care for Pip when he is sick in bed. A true gentleman has an unconditional love for those close to him; exactly like the love Joe had for Pip. Pip realizes Joe's kindness in the end of the novel, and goes back to loving the ones he had loved and then shunned.Pip truly becomes a gentleman at the end of the novel. He turns away all his possessions and his new, more grand high class London life, and goes back home to make a living and make it up to the ones he hurt. Pip realizes at this point in the book that kindness and being a hard worker are more important then money or social status and that if you do not have these traits you cannot truly be a gentleman, for they are more important then other material things.At the end of the novel, Pip's experiences in life transform him into a kind and caring gentleman. He finally lived up to the "great expectations" Dickens had set for him, which were to mature into a compassionate and hard working true gentleman.
