Arrogant Aristocrats

In our recent readings of “Great Expectations,” we have seen a rapid decline of Pip’s personality.  He has been completely corrupted by his wealth.  Pip wastefully spends his money, accumulating mass amounts of debt.  He has no understanding of how to save his money because it was just given to him.  There was no work involved; Pip was just in the right place at the right time to receive his great expectations.  This is very similar to many people today.  Not necessarily the part where they were given money, but a vast majority of people in our society is not very good at managing money.  They have many credit cards, each adding to their masses of debt.  I guess they just think that a credit card is just an endless source of money, however, it obviously is not, and spending too much money will come back to haunt you. 

Another corruption of Pip is that he has become very arrogant.  He has pointed out Biddy’s “bad side of human nature.”  Pip thinks that she is jealous, but she clearly is not.  Throughout the reading, we see many examples of his arrogant attitude and it makes me dislike Pip.

Pip’s arrogance, as well as his childish ways of managing his money makes me actually kind of angry. Just because of his sudden gain in wealth, that he had to do absolutely no work for, Pip thinks that he is a better human being than Biddy, Joe, and almost everyone else in the novel.  This reminds me of the kind of people today that think they are so much better than everyone else.  They have no reason to think so, but they do, I can assure you of that.  The people like this get my blood boiling when they strut around thinking little of everyone else, and the same is true with Pip degrading Biddy and everyone who he grew up with.  My observations so far have been that as the novel progresses, my disliking of Pip increases.