There's a laundry list of the
problems I have with Great Expectations. It's mostly a matter of
pacing--things happen far too slowly, and when they do finally happen they take
the most anticlimactic route possible. The exact same story could have been
told, with nothing valuable lost, in half the number of pages. I know Charles
Dickens was probably being paid by the word to crank this thing out, but still,
this is pure diarrhea of the mouth.
The biggest problem I have with Expectations,
however, is a problem I often have with first person stories and that is: are
we really supposed to believe that the protagonist has a photographic memory?
How are they able to remember entire conversations they've had verbatim,
so that the story they're narrating can be considered an accurate recollection
of events passed? Pip, the protagonist of Expectations, can fully recall
just about everything anyone's ever said to and about him from the age of seven
onward. He even memorizes letters he receives and then is promptly ordered to
destroy in said letters. Nowhere is it ever stated in the book that Pip has a
good memory, much less an unfailingly perfect one. For me, this eidetic memory
thing really stretches my suspension of disbelief. I know this isn't a fault
original to Expectations, but when I was reading it I could be helped
but be extremely bothered by it.
Dickens, I'm going to call
"bah, humbug" on you.
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