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Charles Dickens gained contemporary literary recognition for writing several novels that not only narrated compelling stories, but also examined the deep social inequalities of his era. With a number of his novels Dickens brought attention to the troubles of the working underclass in Victorian England, and suggested ideas of repairing the gap of social injustice. Of all of his works, however, Great Expectations certainly stands alone in its pairing of social critique and social commentary. In the beginning the reader only sees a simple description of the problematic life of an orphan during Victorian England. Dickens developed Pip as the narrator and protagonist of Great Expectations which helps the reader to understand the critique expressed with the novel. Through Pip’s eyes, the reader sees clearly the economic gap between rich and poor, and the social split between the upper and lower classes. More important, since Dickens describes Pip’s struggle to climb that socioeconomic ladder through education and self-improvement, the reader begins to grasp the fundamental social injustice of such societal inequality. After reading the novel and giving some deeper thoughts to it, I asked myself the question of whether Dickens iss