“Great Expectations,” perhaps one of Charles Dickens' most renowned and popular works, illustrates a very biased social class structure along the boundaries of the story. There are the poor, who have nothing but what they earn, “just enough to survive” doing hard labor for most of their lives. Then there are the middle classes or the "Gentlemen" who do not want but have a decent income and are supported in their desires. As in modern society, the transition from the poor to the upper class “working class” is usually accompanied by the amount of wealth one has acquired. But was this the concept of social class that Dickens was trying to illustrate throughout his life? Also, what was your intention with putting it into the story? In short, what was Dickens's definition of social class overall? To begin with, it seems appropriate to give an overview of the story. Pip, the main character and protagonist of the story, grows up in the working class, working in a forge with his lifelong friend Joe, an ignorant man who knows his job and that's all. One day, as a boy, Pip is attacked by an escaped convict who decides to be kind too and goes to get him something to eat and drink. Not long after receiving the gift, the condemned man is captured and taken to prison. Some time after the incident with the escaped convict, Pip is summoned to the home of a rather wealthy woman named Miss Havisham. To call this woman despicable would be an understatement as she is unable to let go of the grudge she holds towards a previous lover who left her at the altar long ago. He sees all men as worthless, evil, and worthless and plans to use a little girl named Estella, a young girl Pip meets on... middle of paper... loves the human qualities that the desperate human need to love the one and the other. Dickens's main point, it seems to this college student, is to give his readers a sense of not losing sight of who they really are and who they can truly be. The sense of power and desire that social class seems to present is actually, as is evident to this college student, a trap set by a metaphorical beast that thrives on its inhabitants. Perhaps Dickens was attempting to warn his fellow men of a threat that was ruining his world to which he himself sometimes seems to have fallen prey, or perhaps Dickens was simply using social class as a structure to somehow tell the story of his life. In any case, “Great Expectations” certainly gives its readers a sense of foreboding when it examines it from its structural sense, into the premises of society and its inhabitants..