GE and HH

In this blog I’ll be examining the meaning of the title’s of each of these works, and their common theme reached via separate stories.

In the reading Great Expectations we get the title directly from Pip and his great expectations of London and the life of a gentleman.  The story following his rise through the strata of english society by nothing short of a miracle, allows for a rather personal view of the class spectrum from poor working Joe to the jaded Mr Jaggers.  But throughout the story there is always a defense and esteem held to honest work. Joe is content in his place in life, ignorant to the rat race and desperate climb for wealth that most notably the Pocket’s scratch towards.  In many places of the book Pip represents a longing to have never been exposed to the concept of wealth and to have never met Estella, who seemed to be the sole catalyst behind his desire to be a gentleman. In Great expectations, Pip’s expectations are never met, and that is how Dickens’ critiques London society.

In Mike Leigh’s High Hopes the title comes from a more ambiguous source, and alludes to of course, Great Expectations.  In High Hopes there is not so central a character as Pip, but there is a protagonist by loose definition in Cyril. The somewhat friendly burn-out hippy and his wife of the same nature serve as the most respectable people in a movie about unrespectable people.  This does not mean however that this movie makes a defense for their behavior, Cyril is a lazy cynic, who seems to revel in his slummy apartment. His sister, a caricature of the consumer, is constantly on the verge of a breakdown and unhappily wed to her equally unhappy capitalist husband, serving as the foil to the Cyril.  These two couples represent the extremes in that generation of the working class, stemming from the bitter grandmother. On a separate page we have the generation of new money. The true wealth, deserved or not, and the utter disconnect with humanity they suffer from is about the peak of evil in the movie. The title in High Hopes could apply almost to the burn-out of the working class couples.  Cyril, at the grave of Karl Marx, wonders what happened to the welfare state. His sister, similar to Great Expectations, breaks down because she is disappointed and unhappy in her mildly successful life.

Both of these stories draw the  same critique via separate stories