Fairy tale conventions and Great Expectations :: essays papers

Fairy tale conventions and Great ExpectationsGreat Expectations and Fairy tales Tolkien describes the facets which ar necessary in a good fairy tales as fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation - recovery from deep despair, escape from some great danger, but intimately of all, consolation. Speak-ing of the happy ending,all carry through fairy stories must have it merely fantastic or terrible the adventure, it can give to child or man that hears it,a catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the centre contiguous to tears. Great Expectations shares galore(postnominal) of the conventions of fairy tales. The one dimensional characters, the use of repetition, and the aversion women seem to make the similarities strikingly strong. However, are they strong abounding to close down that it is thus a fairy tale? It can not be ignored that it too falls short on some historic areas, such as the traditional fairy tale ending. Is there enough evidence to classify it either w ay? Fairy tales have characters of complete good or complete evil. There are no characters who posses some(prenominal) of these qualities. In reading Great Expectations it is plain to see that there is indeed total goodness and total evil. This can be seen in many of the characters. There is no goodness to be engraft in Orlick. He plays the role of the bully. His hot temper results in the near death of Mrs. Joe and in the near death of Pip. Compeyson is another who has no goodness to be found in him. He is full of evil and hate. It was said that He had no more heart than a iron file, he was cold as death and he had the head of the devil. He broke the heart of poor Miss Havisham so he could have her money. He also longed to kill his enemy, Magwitch, and ends up reporting him to the officials to get him put to death. Nowhere in this tale do either of these men show one snow leopard of compassion or goodness. They can both be regarded as the enemies and the problematic guys of the story. Joe is a character who shows complete goodness. He is kind hearted and gentle. His generosity and pardon is demonstrated countless times in the story. When the escaped convict speaks almost the food he stole from Joe and asks his forgiveness, Joes response is not one of anger.