Jul 06, 2003 08:17 PM
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(Updated Jul 06, 2003 08:17 PM)
When I read Great Expectations for the first time I felt I was only reading the plot or script of a Hindi movie. Pip, the hero, gets rich luckily and he fell in love with Estella, a rich beautiful girl. I guess the similarity between this novel and Hindi movies ends here.
After Pip gets rich he neglected all his old friends and relatives who were with him when he was poor. He felt embarrassed and uncomfortable at their presence. However this is the same thing that often happens to us when we meet our poor relatives at a party. Our social conventions are mainly to be blamed for it. Unfortunately we don?t see much challenge to this system in our literature and movies. Dickens does not support this system and shows how Pip suffers for leaving the friends.
Unfortunately Pip was so happy with his newfound wealth that he did not care to investigate who was his secret benefactor. He wastes his time after Estella in vain. He could have spent his fortune for studies and could get a better and more beautiful girl than her. It is very easy to destroy but it is so difficult to create something in life. Pip got an way out from depressing poverty and he did not use his opportunity. He was impressed with the fancy of urban rich life but he did not try to know the secret behind such a life. There is nothing wrong to be a gentleman but he did not become a gentleman. He wanted to blindly follow all the bad things of urban life. I see this trend visible in my society too. Here in my city boys and girls of the young generation are desperately busy to follow all the bad sides of American culture. But they never can imagine that in USA a normal average university student has to literally go through hell in every semester. These students of Dhaka think that following MTV fashion is cool and that is America. Sadly enough they do not know that America is working like a machine for 8 hours daily and then doing all the house work because they don?t have servants available like us. And as a result many of the students of my city end up like Pip. When they face reality they realize that paradise of fantasy is lost.
