LAGAAN by Rajeev Masand

SUMMARY:
    Lagaan which means Tax in Hindi is one of the best gifts to Movie lovers given by Ashutosh. Although the story dates back to the Pre-Independence Era, the lessons derived from it are not less than any modern day Management lesson.

 The story is about the farmers of Champaner who are burdened with heavy taxes and no rains. When they approach the Resident British Officer Captain Russel, to waive off their tax, he challenges one of the young farmers Bhuvan with a game of cricket. The British were already well versed with the game of cricket, but the Indian farmers were not even aware about a bat. The challenge for the Indian farmers was to win the match against the British to find themselves tax free for three years, or they had to pay double the current tax. They got help in the form of Captain Russels’ Sister who taught them the game and the strategies. There are many lessons of leadership one can derive from the movie.Think of Problems as Opportunities.

When Captain Russel challenges Bhuvan for match, Bhuvan accepts it because he knows that there is really no option. It is a risk, but without taking risks, there are no rewards. Given the state of his brethren (and with no looming rains), Bhuvan viewed the instrumentalism of trying to reduce the double tax as a non-option against the possibility of better quality of life offered by a victory in the cricket match. In our lives too, we face a lot of problems. We need to think of these as opportunities for innovation.

Dream Big and Define the Goals.

Once Bhuvan accepted the challenge, his dream was three years of no tax. It may have seemed unrealistic or even improbable, but then that's what dreams are. Dreaming is about imagining a different future. In the case of Bhuvan, he not only dreamt big but also put in place a strategy to make that a reality. To make things happen the way we want, we have to envision the future, and paint a picture in front of the others of what we want to achieve.Make a Beginning.

Bhuvan did not wait to start. He did not see around. He made a bat and a ball, got a kid interested and started. Many times, we brood and end up thinking too much. The only way one can test out new ideas is by jumping in, by getting started. Only when we close the door behind us will we see the doors in front start opening.

Small Victories are Important at the Start.

The first time Bhuvan hits the ball, he does so in full view of the entire village. He makes it seem easy; he makes them want to participate. In the film, watch the faces of the villagers after Bhuvan's first strike. When starting any project, it is important to have small wins at the start to motivate the team. 

>>>I know nothing about the Indian culture or music, and I was a bit skeptical that a 4-hour subtitled movie filmed in India about CRICKET would be of interest to me. I loved every minute. Not only was this movie visually beautiful and well paced, it also has a "good heart." Although a classic tale of courageous common folk rising up against oppressors, the story is told with humor and affection and with an infectious joy and innocence that is very appealing. One example of the director's skill is that even though most of the film is concerned with cricket, a sport about which I know absolutely nothing, the movie never lags or slows down, but keeps an active pace.

#MARXISM THEORY

MY FATHER, THE ENGLISHMAN AND I by Nurrudin Farah

SUMMARY:
         The narrator has absorbed the effects of it around him from his family, specifically his father and mother, and interpreted their communications regarding the Englishman and his father. The boy sees how his mother reacts to his father’s occupation with the Englishman, and how she deeply resents it all. The boy automatically begins to take sides with his mother, partly due to his mother’s kindness towards him and partly due to his father’s harsh disposition towards the children. It seems as though the boy lost respect for his father as he thought about his interaction with the Englishman, relating their relationship as one of a student and his teacher, with his father “speaking only when spoken to or after he had been given the go-ahead” (292). The boy sees his father kowtowing to the Englishman, “doing his bidding and never speaking an unkind word about him” (290). The problem for the boy seeing this interaction and having his mind made up in partial alliance with his mother is that he is unable to allow himself to enjoy the sweets given to him by the Englishman or willingly be embraced by him. The boy sees his father as weak, unable to stand up to the Englishman even when the occasion might call for it. He believes he held off the treaty due to his cry at the meeting, and had he or his mother been present at the next meeting it might not have been signed at all. This last thought leaves the reader realizing that even the young and powerless can feel convicted and react to the colonization of their land.

>>>The factor that struck me most in this story was the difference between the boy's father at home and with the Englishman. He's obviously a man to be feared at home and totally subservient in the presence of the Englishman. How difficult that would be for a child to process. My only criticism is that Farah is attributing thoughts to a 3 year old that I don't believe he would have had. My praise has to do with his ability to portray entire lives, completely, in the space of 2 and a half pages, amazing. 
#PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD by Buchi Emecheta

SUMMARY:
     The book opens as Nnu Ego runs away from her home in Lagos, Nigeria, where her first baby has just died. She has decided to commit suicide.

The story flashes back to the story of how Nnu Ego was conceived. Her father, Agbadi, though he has many wives, is in love with a proud and haughty young woman named Ona. Ona refuses to marry him because she is obligated to produce a son for her father's family line, and not a husband's. But when Agbadi is almost killed in a hunting accident, Ona nurses him back to health and becomes pregnant with his child. She agrees that if it's a daughter, the child will belong to Agbadi.

Nnu Ego is Agbadi's favorite daughter and she grows into a beautiful young woman. Her first marriage is to the son of another wealthy and titled family. Unfortunately, the marriage soon grows sour because Nnu Ego fails to have children. Her husband takes a second wife, who quickly conceives. Nnu Ego grows thin and worn out because she's so unhappy. She goes back to live with her father, who arranges a second marriage.

Nnu Ego's second marriage is to Nnaife, a man who works in Lagos as the washer for a white family, Dr. and Mrs. Meers. Though Nnu Ego is disappointed with Nnaife – he isn't her ideal man – she quickly becomes pregnant. This is the child that dies and propels her to almost commit suicide by jumping off a bridge.

When she's talked out of jumping off the bridge, Nnu Ego returns home and becomes pregnant again rather quickly. World War II interferes in Nnu Ego's and Nnaife's happiness. The Meers return to Europe, and Nnaife is out of work for months while Nnu Ego supports the family through petty trade. Nnaife eventually gets work on a ship, which means he's gone for months at a time. Nnu Ego struggles to make ends meet while he's gone. When he finally returns, it's only to be greeted by the news that his elder brother has died and Nnaife has inherited all his brother's wives and children. Most of the wives remain in Ibuza, but Adaku comes to Lagos and moves in with Nnu Ego and Nnaife.

Nnu Ego learns to become the senior wife, and to share Nnaife's pitiful salary with Adaku and her children. Life is a constant struggle for survival, but it only gets worse when Nnaife is conscripted into the army and sent to fight in World War II. He's gone for four years. His wives must wait patiently with no news and no salary.

Adaku takes up trading to support herself and her two children, while Nnu Ego struggles to support her four children. Nnu Ego goes home to Ibuza because her father dies. During her long absence, Adaku's trading becomes very successful, while Nnu Ego's dwindles to nothing. Nnu Ego has to start all over again, but she is jealous of Adaku's success. The two women have a conflict, and the family men settle in favor of Nnu Ego even though she's wrong. It turns out that the men side with Nnu Ego because she is the senior wife. Adaku finally recognizes that because she is the junior wife and has only has daughters, her position in the family is nothing. She leaves to become a prostitute.

After many years, Nnu Ego discovers that she has been sent three years of Nnaife's salary. She is finally able to pay her children's school fees and feed them well. Nnaife arrives home not long after. The war is over. He apparently feels the sting of Adaku's defection because he decides to go home and assert his rights of inheritance with his brother's eldest wife, Adankwo. He gets her pregnant and brings home yet another wife, a young girl named Okpo.

Nnu Ego is frustrated. They can hardly afford the children they have, yet Nnaife keeps fathering more children and demanding more wives. Yet Okpo is a good girl, and has the same traditional values that Nnu Ego has, so their relationship is a good one, almost like that of a mother and daughter. Nnaife surprises everybody when he offers the rest of his military money to pay for Oshia's expensive schooling. (Oshia is Nnaife and Nnu Ego's second child , but the first to live.) The expectation is that Oshia will graduate and get a good job and help pay for his younger brothers' schooling, as well as provide for his parents in their old age.

Oshia has other ideas, however. He wants to continue with university in America. His disregard for his own duties as the first-born son causes his parents great anguish. Nnaife is never the same again after he feels betrayed by Oshia. When his daughter, Kehinde, breaks his rules by running away with a Yoruba man, he assaults the father of Kehinde's husband. Sent to prison, Nnaife blames Nnu Ego for all his problems. Whatever love he once hand for her has turned to bitter hatred.

With Oshia in America, and Adim (Nnaife and Nnu Ego's third child and second living son) working and paying for his own schooling, and her two oldest daughters settled in marriages, Nnu Ego moves back to Ibuza. She is not welcome on Nnaife's family's compound so she moves into her father's old household with her youngest children. She lives out the rest of her days there.

When she dies, her children finally come home – Oshia from America and Adim from Canada – and throw her an expensive funeral. They build a shrine so that her descendants can pray to her and ask for children. But Nnu Ego refuses to answer those prayers.

>>>I felt evey bit of Nnu Ego's struggles, and I'm glad of the acceptance she came to just before the book ended. I don't believe her misfortunes are typical though, even if such an exaggeration is neccessary to bring up the issues Buchi is trying to hammer on. I like that she was not judgemental, examining it from the viewpoints of all the parties involved.

There is practicality to African culture if held seperate from western culture. Unfortunately this is impossible, and poor Ego and Nnaife were cut in the gap between cultures.
And I wept a lot, even though I laughed only once. My laughter was not at something funny, more of a comic image of a tragic occurrence. Don't read if you're depressed and need cheering up.

#DECONSTRUCTION THEORY

THE FABULOUS BEASTS by Joseph Nigg

Nigg charts the rise and fall and re-emergence of mythical beasts throughout history, using as many original texts as possible to support his thesis. His excerpts range far and wide, from the Bible to Borges, Plato to Goethe, Apollonius to Julian Barnes. By tracing the tangled origins and transformations of many fantasy tropes, Nigg has done a valuable service to the world of fantastical fiction. More importantly, he has done for the world of fantastical animals what Joseph Campbell did more generally for the world of myth: He has set it down in all its intricacies, citing the most relevant sources, and come up with a book unique for its dogged thoroughness. The scope of Nigg's study, and the care with which he has gathered his materials, are such that I believe this work will become the bible of imaginary creatures." The Book of Fabulous Beasts traces the development of imaginary animals as they appear and reappear in literary accounts from the Babylonian epic of creation to modern fantasy.

#HUMANISM

      

PORTRAIT OF A NOVEL by Michael Gorra

SUMMARY:

Henry James (1843–1916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism, and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of James's masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881).


Gorra, an eminent literary critic, shows how this novel - the scandalous story of the expatriate American heiress Isabel Archer - came to be written in the first place. Traveling to Florence, Rome, Paris, and England, Gorra sheds new light on James's family, the European literary circles - George Eliot, Flaubert, Turgenev - in which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create this most memorable of female protagonists. Appealing to readers of Menand's The Metaphysical Club and McCullough's The Greater Journey, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written. It becomes a piercing detective story on its own.


>>>Portrait of a Novel is effectively a new biography of James, with The Portrait of a Lady at its centre. Gorra describes the entire arc of James’s life, unobtrusively (this is made possible by the fact that James wrote it as a youngish man, and rewrote it, in 1906, as an oldish man); but he does so in order to tell the story of the novel – both as a critic and as a biographer.

#NEW HISTORICISM

THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus

SUMMARY:
 From the title, you know this book is about a plague. This particular plague happens in a Algerian port town called Oran in the 1940s. The story is narrated to us by an odd, nameless narrator strangely obsessed with objectivity, who tends to focus on a man named Dr. Bernard Rieux.

The mess starts when rats everywhere die. And not just a few rats; we’re talking big honkin’ piles of rats. This concerns Dr. Rieux, but not as much as the weird way in which the rats die (with some manic spinning and not a little spurting of blood). Before the general panic sets in, we meet some of our cast of characters: Rieux’s invalid wife, who is quickly sent away to be treated while his mother comes to take her place, and a nameless old asthmatic Spaniard, a patient of the doctor who is also quite the odd duck and is positively gleeful about this rat business.

While we are still waiting for general panic to set in, we meet a young reporter named Raymond Rambert who’s sniffing about town for a story. After this brief introduction, Rambert stays out of the story for a bit, as does a wealthy visitor named Jean Tarrou whom Rieux briefly bumps into around the same time.

General panic sets in shortly after the rats stop dying publicly (probably because there are none left) and the people start dying instead. Before we get too excited about all the action, the narrator pulls in the reins and has us take a look at things through the journal of the mysterious and wealthy Jean Tarrou. These journals become the second way (in addition to the narrator’s exposition) that we get information about Oran and the plague.

Oops – we gave that one away. Yes, in fact, the illness and death we're witnessing is caused by THE plague (also known as Black Death, the Black Plague, or Bubonic plague). The only issue is that no one wants to call it the plague, so the authorities keep beating around the bush as more and more people die. Meanwhile we meet two new characters: Cottard, who has just unsuccessfully tried to kill himself, and Grand, his neighbor (and friend to Rieux) who has just saved Cottard from killing himself. Grand is an odd duck (a common theme in these parts) because of his unbelievable level of ineloquence. The man can’t compose a decent sentence with a dictionary, a thesaurus, and three speech writers. Grand obsesses over word choice to the point of verbal paralysis. More on this guy later.

Dr. Rieux and his colleagues Dr. Richard and Dr. Castel badger the authorities into taking action, which backfires as the town is now quarantined from the rest of the world. Nice going. Cottard meanwhile is acting rather suspicious, as he’s trying to make friends with everyone and is painfully afraid of policemen and any talk of criminals getting punished.

Conditions worsen and more people die. Grand starts writing a book, which is really one sentence that he just can’t get right, and expresses a desire to write a letter to his wife Jeanne, who left him before the plague hit. Speaking of missing wives, journalist Rambert is itching to get out of town since 1) he totally doesn’t live here and 2) this girl (who he calls his "wife") is waiting for him in Paris. Rambert tries all sorts of string-pulling to get himself out of Oran, but the authorities are having none of it.

Father Paneloux, Oran’s friendly neighborhood priest, delivers a sermon in this time of need about how the plague is everyone’s fault and they all deserve this suffering and pestilence. People start freaking out about the skyrocketing death tolls (up to 700 a week). The citizens retreat to their various homes and morale is at an all-time low.

Tarrou, a mysterious guy, records more journal entries. One family he observes is that of M. Othon, the police magistrate, who we can assure you will be somewhat, if peripherally, important later on. Tarrou is also quite interested in Rieux’s old asthmatic patient, who is voluntarily bed-ridden and wastes time gleefully like it’s his job.

Good ol’ Tarrou decides he’s had enough of all this death and suffering, so he meets with Rieux and convinces the doctor to help him raise teams of volunteers to fight the plague. Lengthy philosophical discussion ensues, which has a knack for happening all over this novel. The volunteer teams in place, the narrator stops to tell us that this isn’t heroism, merely the action of men who know how to do their jobs and duties.

We check in with Grand’s book, which has progressed not at all from its first line. The narrator declares that if his story were to have a hero – which it does not – Grand would be it because of his simple heart and ideals or something like that. (He’s been an asset to the anti-plague effort.)

Rambert, meanwhile, hasn’t been able to leave Oran legally and so decides to escape illegally. Cottard, our resident criminal and shady-guy extraordinaire, decides to help. The two go through a series of meetings with other shady guys, the upshot of the whole deal being that making arrangement to leave town takes a while. When Tarrou suggests one night that Cottard stop being shady and start helping them fight the plague, Cottard reveals that, actually, he’s quite happy with the plague, as he’s making a lot of money on the black market and also, the police are too busy fighting pestilence to arrest him for that thing he did that one time which he won’t tell us about. (Turns out, that’s why he tried to commit suicide; he was afraid of being arrested and going to jail.)

Rambert starts feeling guilty about running away like a coward, so he helps with Rieux and Tarrou’s volunteer sanitation teams while he continues to plot his escape from town. Martial law has been declared, which is a clear indication that life is sucking big time in Oran. There are now so many bodies that the cemeteries are full, most houses/hotels/buildings in general have been converted to hospitals or isolation camps, and the plague has evolved into a more deadly and more contagious strain. The light at the end of the tunnel is nowhere to be seen. After a lengthy philosophical discussion with Rieux (we told you that keeps happening), Rambert decides on the night of his would-be escape that he’ll stay in Oran and help fight the plague. One of Rieux’s colleagues devises a serum that does exactly jack for a small boy – the son of police magistrate M. Othon – who suffers extensively and dies of the plague, much to everyone’s anger and God-cursing disappointment. Father Paneloux gives another sermon, this time revealing how much he's struggling in his faith after having seen an innocent child die. Shortly later, Paneloux himself dies, although Dr. Rieux is unable to determine whether he died of the plague or some other illness.

Tarrou, being mysterious and all, has repeatedly suggested that he hates such men as M. Othon, the friendly local magistrate. Now that we’re nearing he end of the novel, he figures this would be a good time to tell Rieux why this is so. Which brings us to The Story of Tarrou’s Life: born, liked mom and dad, was OK with dad being a prosecutor, saw dad condemn a man to the death penalty, was no longer OK with anything, left home, and is still adamant agitator against the death penalty.

Several pages of philosophical banter later, the plague is still kicking Oran’s butt. In fact, Grand falls victim to the plague and everyone expects him to die. He doesn’t. Grand’s recovery seems to mark an upswing for the town – the anti-plague serum starts working and the plague is officially in recession, with fewer people dying every day!

Unfortunately, while fewer people are dying, people are still in fact dying. Such people include M. Othon (sad), Jean Tarrou (catastrophically sad), and Rieux’s absent, invalid wife (we didn’t really know her that well). Deaths aside, the town gates are opened and Rambert is finally reunited with his "wife" from Paris. Rieux is alone, reveals that he was the narrator this whole time (gasp!), and says his intentions in writing this account were to ready us should we ever contract the plague, and to record the lessons learned by suffering.

Of course, the novel was riddled with incredible nuggets of beautifully crafted philosophical gold, but you’ll have to read a bit more than this plot overview to get at those.

>>> A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. The plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes a omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.The idea of the absurd has much more of an abstract quality in The Plague than in Camus’ earlier work, but as always it is an ever-present theme.  The plague itself can be read as a metaphor for absurdity, or at least as the type of devastating circumstance—such as a war—that brings people face to face with the absurd.  When the plague initially breaks out, Rieux ponders how everyone was caught off guard by its appearance simply because it is not a normal part of the human experience.

#EXISTENTIALISM

THE DAY I ATE WHATEVER I WANTED by Elizabeth Berg

SUMMARY:

Exhilarating short stories of women breaking free from convention


Every now and then, right in the middle of an ordinary day, a woman rebels, kicks up her heels, and commits a small act of liberation.

What would you do, if you were going to break out and away? Go AWOL from Weight Watchers and spend an entire day eating every single thing you want – and then some? Start a dating service for people over fifty to reclaim the razzle-dazzle in your life–or your marriage? Seek comfort in the face of aging, look for love in the midst of loss, find friendship in the most surprising of places?

Imagine that the people in these wonderful stories – who do all of these things and more – are asking you: What would you do, if nobody was looking?

So far, the stories follow a sort of formulaeic pattern of experience and memory, emotion and physicality, and they all seem to end on a sort of philosophical plane. which, and you'll sense a pattern here, annoyed me at first. but then i guess that's what you do with short stories - everything has to be wrapped up in this little package, and since it's only a glimpse into the whole story, there really is no "ending". so i guess that's the significance of finishing with a questing thought or a random memory. First impression: i am just annoyed at what seems to be blatant pandering to female readers: the bright pink color scheme, the diet themed title, etc. (i do realize however that neither of those things may have been the choice of the author.) So far, the writing is confessional, sometimes amusing, although i don't find such an obsession with weight watchers that hilarious.

#ROMANTICISM THEORY

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte

SUMMARY:

          Really the story is one of revenge. It follows the life of Heathcliff, a mysterious gypsy-like person, from childhood (about seven years old) to his death in his late thirties. Heathcliff rises in his adopted family and then is reduced to the status of a servant, running away when the young woman he loves decides to marry another. He returns later, rich and educated, and sets about gaining his revenge on the two families that he believed ruined his life.

Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story. There are evidences in every chapter of a sort of rugged power,an unconscious strength which the possessor seems never to think of turning to the best advantage. The general effect is inexpressibly painful. We know nothing in the whole range of our fictitious literature which presents such shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity. An attempt to give novelty and interest to fiction, by resorting to those singular 'characters' that used to exist everywhere, but especially in retired and remote places. The success is not equal to the abilities of the writer; chiefly because the incidents are too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive, the very best being improbable, with a moral taint about them, and the villainy not leading to results sufficient to justify the elaborate pains taken in depicting it. The execution, however, is good: grant the writer all that is requisite as regards matter, and the delineation is forcible and truthful.

#FEMINISM THEORY

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN by Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!


From this poem we can get an idea of the American (industrialized world) perspective of the nonindustrial world and their role in it. There feeling of needing to spread there “better” way of life. The poem stresses a very Eurocentric view of the world in which non European nations are seen as demonic and childlike and need the help of developed nations to improve their culture and station in life by making them more westernized. There is a strong message that the rich nations have an obligation to help the poor whether they want it or not.
Kipling suggests that there is no reward for caring the white man’s burden but that is not so.
It is important to look at this poem with a critical mind because what is said and what was done are very different. While some may truly have felt their duty to better the lives of those in the less developed nations many used the idea of spreading civilizations as justification for talking over lands and exploiting the people and resources for the betterment of the industrialized nation, not for the benefit of the “uncivilized.”
It is important to note how this feeling of superiority and needing to spread civilization was not felt by all in America or throughout the industrialized world. The term "The White Man's Burden” refers to the "burden" or “hardships" that was placed onto the Americans because they had a duty to spread their huge advancement and better way of living with the rest of the world. From Rudyard Kipling's point of view, the "white men" have a very strong ideological mindset and think they are better than anyone else.
#POST COLONIAL THEORY

GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens

A six-year-old boy named Pip lives on the English marshes with his sister and his sister’s husband, Joe. His sister is mean but his brother-in-law Joe is pretty much the best thing that’s happened to Pip.

One Christmas Eve, Pip meets a scary, escaped convict in a churchyard. Pip steals food from his bossy sister (Mrs. Joe Gargery) so that the convict won’t starve (and also so that the convict won’t rip his guts out). Soon after, Pip gets asked to play at Miss Havisham’s. Miss Havisham is a rich old lady who lives in a castle-mansion that is covered in vines, moss, and overgrown green things. Long ago she was jilted at the altar and since that very day, she’s never taken her wedding dress off, nor has she changed a single thing about her castle. As you might expect, there are lots of bugs and things creeping around.

Pip meets Estella, Miss Havisham’s adopted child. Estella is cold, snobby, and regal, but man is she pretty. She doesn’t really talk to Pip, but Pip soon realizes that he’s been asked to serve as Estella’s playmate.

Pip continues to go to Miss Havisham’s and continues to be snubbed by Estella. She grows on him. He develops a little crush. This crush turns into a big crush, and that big crush turns into full-blown, all-consuming L-O-V-E. We love what we can’t have, and there is no way in h-e-double-hockey sticks that Pip, the orphan, can ever have a chance with Estella, the adopted child of the richest lady in town.

When Pip is old enough (early teens), he begins an apprenticeship at his brother-in-law's smithy, thanks to Ms. Havisham’s financial support. He hates his new job, wanting more than anything to become a gentleman, mostly because he dreams of marrying Estella.

Then, one day, Pip comes into fortune by means of a mysterious and undisclosed benefactor (you’ll never guess who it is!), says goodbye to his family, and says goodbye to Miss Havisham. He leaves for London to become a gentleman. This ends the first part of Pip’s expectations.

London is pretty sweet at first, despite all of the grime. Mr. Jaggers, Pip’s caretaker, is one of the biggest and baddest lawyers in town. Criminals and their families hang out around Jaggers’ office just to be near his greatness. Pip also gets a new BFF named Herbert Pocket – he is Miss Havisham’s cousin’s son. Herbert shows Pip around town and helps him learn how to be a gentleman, which is –in short – really hard.

Pip's life in London is busy, full of dinner parties in castles with moats, encounters with strange housekeepers, trips to the theater, etc. He spends way too much money, so his debts just keep piling up. Occasionally, he takes a break from his London life and goes back home to visit Miss Havisham. He also returns home to attend his sister’s funeral. Back at home, though, Pip is too ashamed of his brother-in-law Joe to want to hang out with him.

Meanwhile, Estella is off touring the world and becoming a lady. She’s even more gorgeous than ever, and she moves to the London area so that she can be closer to eligible bachelors.

On his 21st birthday, Jaggers gives Pip a 500-pound annual allowance (which would be a lot of money back then) and tells Pip that his benefactor will soon reveal himself. Pip decides to use this new money to help Herbert secure a job.

Though he continues to long for Estella, she continues to deny Pip lovin’. Then, one night on his 23rd birthday when it’s dark and stormy outside and Pip is thinking about Estella, a stranger arrives. This stranger is Pip’s benefactor. This stranger is…the CONVICT that Pip helped when he was only six years old! This ends the second part of Pip’s expectations.

The convict’s name is Abel Magwitch (but he goes by Provis in town). The courts had exiled him to New South Wales a long time ago under strict orders never, ever to return to England. Ruh-roh. Pip doesn’t feel so good about the whole benefactor thing anymore, and now he’s harboring a convict. Double ruh-roh.

After much hemming and hawing, Pip decides that he has to get Magwitch out of the country. They devise a plan to sneak onto a ship bound for Germany. Pip feels really uneasy all the time and his stomach is butterfly-city. He has the sneaky suspicion that he’s being followed or watched.

Just as they get ready to make their great escape, Estella goes and marries Pip’s nemesis and Pip is almost thrown into a limekiln by a hometown bully who claims to know about Magwitch. As you might have guessed, Pip and Magwitch's great escape isn't successful. They've been ratted out by Magwitch’s nemesis, who is coincidentally, Miss Havisham’s ex-lover. Magwitch is thrown in jail, where he dies soon after being sentenced to the death penalty. Right before he dies, though, Pip tells Magwitch that Estella is his daughter. And that he's in love with Estella.

Pip gets really sick, and Joe comes to the rescue. For a while, it’s like old times when Pip and Joe would hang out. As soon as Pip recovers, however, Joe leaves him in the middle of the night, having paid off all of Pip’s debts.

A few days later, Pip returns home, intending to ask for Joe’s forgiveness and to propose marriage to his childhood friend, Biddy. Upon arriving home, however, he finds that Joe and Biddy have just married. He begs for their forgiveness at having been such a butthead, and then he moves to Cairo.

Pip works in Cairo at Herbert’s shipping company for eleven years and eventually becomes a partner in the company. He sends money back to Joe and Biddy. Eventually, Pip returns and meets Joe and Biddy’s son, Pip. Pip is totally enamored of baby Pip.

What follows are two different endings:

The original ending sees Pip hanging out in London one day a few years later with baby Pip. He runs into Estella, and he can see that time has changed her and that she has suffered much. He's heard that her husband was abusive, but that when he died, she married a poor doctor.

In the rewritten ending, Pip visit Miss Havisham's house once more. There, he sees Estella walking the grounds. She is single, beautiful, and regretful of having thrown Pip’s love away. Pip knows that they will be together forevermore. The end.

The novel is a narration by a mature and retrospective Pip. It is divided into three distinct stages, each labeled as a specific stage of Pip’s expectations. These chapters trace Pip’s progress from industrious obscurity as a child through willful idleness as an adolescent and young adult, to a resigned and modest acceptance of his true place in society. Pip learns to appreciate his true self and position in society. The varied texture of the novel in all these aspects sustains and maintains the interest of the reader. Making the fictional book feel almost autobiographical.A novel with a vast range of subject and incident like that in Great Expectations has to be written carefully, paying great attention to unity and detail. Of all Dickens’ works, this one is generally thought to be the best.

#AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM

SONG OF THE SHIRT by Thomas Hood

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread —
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the "Song of the Shirt."

"Work! work! work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!          
And work — work — work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's Oh! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,* 
If this is Christian work!

"Work — work — work,
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work — work — work,
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, * and band,                
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

"Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh, men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch — stitch — stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt,                         30
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

"But why do I talk of Death?
That Phantom of grisly bone,
I hardly fear its terrible shape,
It seems so like my own —
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep;
Oh, God! that bread should be so dear
And flesh and blood so cheap!              

"Work — work — work!
My labour never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread — and rags.
That shattered roof — this naked floor —
A table — a broken chair —
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!

"Work — work — work!
From weary chime to chime,                  
Work — work — work,
As prisoners work for crime!
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed,
As well as the weary hand.

"Work — work — work,
In the dull December light,
And work — work — work,
When the weather is warm and bright —     
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the spring.

"Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet —
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet;
For only one short hour
To feel as I used to feel,                           
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

"Oh! but for one short hour!
A respite however brief!
No blessd leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for Grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread —

Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, —
Would that its tone could reach the Rich! —
She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

Song of the Shirt refers to the exploitation of the working factory underclass by the rich. When I first read the poem, I thought it is unfair. The rich people here treat the poor people better than that. However, the poem refers to the working conditions overseas from where so many of our shirts come. I totally agree with the song, it was so unfair how these women were treated.  It specifically refers to the exploitation of home workers and as such it was part of a growing movement for social reform which included the abolition of slavery.

#NEW CRITICISM THEORY

I TAUGHT MYSELF TO LIVE SIMPLY by Anna Akhmatova

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.

This poem depicts the author's realization of how beautiful nature is and how comforting it can be.  She seems to shut out the world around her, paying attention only to what is naturally there.  Her reasoning behind her turn to simple living is unclear.  It could have happened for many reasons, anything from experiencing a strong emotion such as sadness, pain, or fear to being at a time in life when she could retire or slow down to a variety of other reasons.  It is easy for readers to visualize her words and see what she is describing in their minds with little or no effort.  An example of this are the following words towards the middle of the poem, "The fluffy cat licks my palm, purrs so sweetly and the fire flares bright." These are things that most anyone can relate to, a cat purring and a fire burning.  The entire poem is easy to understand and relate to. 
#READER'S RESPONSE THEORY