Great Expectations Essay

An Untraditional Fairy Tale Fairy tales have been told throughout the world for hundreds of years, and have come to be well-recognized and cherished by much of society. They follow a typical – if anything but overused – plotline, with cliché characters and a beautiful happy ending. However, some of the most popular modern-day classics differ greatly from their original endings. For example, in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, Ariel exchanges her mermaid tail and voice for human legs (that cause her immense pain when she walks on them) and a soul (Andersen didn’t believe Mermaids had souls, apparently) which she can only keep if she receives true love’s kiss. She attempts to woo Prince Eric, but he marries a princess and Ariel becomes heartbroken. Her sisters offer her a deal: if she kills Prince Eric she will become a mermaid again, but Ariel can’t bear to kill him and commits suicide by throwing herself to the sea and turning into sea foam – a very different conclusion from the family-friendly Disney version. Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations is another fairy tale that doesn’t have a very conventional ending. His novel makes it clear that these tales do not have to follow the same path as others just to be good. Using satire and poignancy, Dickens spins a story with both typical fairy tale elements like characters and morals as well as twists in the storyline, resulting in a not-so-traditional fairy tale. Without the right character roles, a fairy tale just is not a fairy tale. Charles Dickens knew this, and the characters in Great Expectations have corresponding parts to the typical ones found in fairy tales – however, some of the characters’ positions in the book are a bit deceiving. Miss Havisham is a main instance. The first few times Pip is summoned to her mansion, he finds her to be creepy and odd, comparing her to a skeleton he saw in the marshes once. Once he falls into his riches, however, he is certain that they were