Great Expectations: Thoughts on Reading

                I really liked Great Expectations! I had heard alot of talk about how long and how hard to understand it was, but it didn’t end up being as hard as I thought it would be. I didn’t really relate to the story, I think because now when I think of a “gentleman” I think of a guy holding the door open for you, or carrying your books, not just and extra rich guy who has nice things and never has to work. So Pip being a gentleman didn’t really relate to me I think because the times are so different. I liked the way they explained London as disappointing and gloomy and where Pip lived as more of an idea place to live, making you think maybe the grass really isn’t greener on the other side, sometime the simple things really are better. I did like reading Dickens; I enjoyed his style of writing, run on sentences and all. It was often hard to understand what he was saying, I remember not knowing what a bunch of words meant, I think I did solve all of the mysteries without help from Sparknotes, some were heavily foreshadowed and hinted to, like to who Estella’s parents really were. But ones like who the man on the staircase was, I had guesses but I didn’t actually figure it out until it was explained later.

                I actually did read every assignment every night, except for one night I fell asleep reading chapter 19, and we ended up having a quiz on it the next day, so I made sure not to do that again. I’m a really bad procrastinator so I usually saved my reading for right before I went to bed, which I guess isn’t bad because a lot of people read to help them fall asleep, but I often found myself being so tired that I wasn’t reading well I was just looking at the words without actually processing them. Besides that one time I fell asleep, I never had to read anything extra because I skipped some days before. My sisters have both gone to college so I would read in their old rooms because I figured out I’m much less distracted in their rooms instead of my own. I think I had a very good understanding of Great Expectations because I consistently read undistracted, and didn’t rely on Sparknotes or other people to tell me about what happened. Sparknotes has a lot on it, but it doesn’t have a bunch of the little random sentences that were actually really important with themes and motifs.