【正确答案】正确答案： On the surface, Great Expectations appears to be simply the story of Pip from his early childhood to his early adulthood, and a recollection of the events and people that Pip encounters throughout his life. In other words, it is a well written story of a young man" s life growing up in England in the early nineteenth century. At first glance, it may appear this way, an interesting narrative of youth, love, success and failure, all of which are the makings of an entertaining novel. However, Great Expectations is much more. Great Expectations is a typical Bildunsroman, or a novel of growth or development. It tells about Pip growing from innocence to experience and from immaturity to maturity. His spiritual odyssey begins in the form of a quest for self-identity and for his true father. Eventually he learns humanity, accepts guilt, retrieves lost values, and grows up. On the one hand, Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain any possible advancement , whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella and join the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear of being punished for bad behavior. Once he understands ideas like poverty, ignorance and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor, ignorant or immoral. However, Pip" s idealism often leads him to perceive the world rather narrowly, and his tendency to oversimplify situations based on superficial values leads him to behave badly toward the people who care about him. When Pip becomes a gentleman, for example, he immediately begins to act as he thinks a gentleman is supposed to act, which leads him to treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly. On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and sympathetic young man, a fact that can be witnessed in his numerous acts of kindness throughout the book and his essential love for all those who love him. Pip" s main line of development in the novel may be seen as the process of learning to place his innate sense of kindness and conscience above his immature idealism. Not long after meeting Miss Havisham and Estella, Pip" s desire for advancement largely overshadows his basic goodness. After receiving his mysterious fortune, his idealistic wishes seem to have been justified, and he gives himself over to a gentlemanly life of idleness. But the discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not the wealthy Miss Havisham, is his secret benefactor shatters Pip" s oversimplified sense of his world" s hierarchy. The fact that he comes to admire Magwitch while losing Estella to the brutish nobleman Drummle ultimately forces him to realize that one" s social position is not the most important quality one possesses, and that his behavior as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the people who care about him most. Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the man who narrates the novel, completing the bildunsroman.