Monsters and Great Expectations Selma Kondoker 12th Grade

We would always look in the darkest places for monsters: under the bed, in the closet, out in the woods where light could never penetrate the trees. We would always let our imagination wander to depict creatures that replicated hairy beasts with angry fangs and cat-like eyes whose pupils never enlarged to show their good in every evil. We would always imagine monsters to be dark, scary, manipulative, and dangerous, but what if the very monsters we pictured were only replicas of us? What if the same monsters we imagined were so familiar to us because we knew that maybe in a different world, they might just be us? One of the revolving yet underlying themes in the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens explores the ideas of how essentially, humans make monsters; they don’t just form on their own. The evil potential in almost every circumstance that can take away from the moral goodness of a character is what can cause the monster-like ideas that people often associates beasts with, such as large, dark, angry, ambitious, and determined. Many of these qualities are also human-like, just not associated negatively when used in a good way. One of the “monstrous” themes that the novel discusses is the idea of wealth-driven...