I Fear It Like The Proverbial Blind Man Who's Afraid Of...

Paula Echeverria
Mrs. Toledano
English II Honors
September 3, 2014
Discovering Meaning “I fear oblivion,” (…) “I fear it like the proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark,”(Green 13). Authors Charles Dickens and John Green acquaint the reader with main protagonists Pip and Hazel Grace. Equally, both characters are forced to encounter several “big questions” throughout their lives. They are forced to dig deep into themselves in order to grow and discover whom they truly are. These questions stem from finding overall mean in their lives to discovering where they truly belong in sometimes a complicated and unforgiving world. To start off, Great Expectations central character, Pip, was brought up by his sister and her husband Joe after being orphaned shortly after birth. However, when Pip was sent to the home of a “rich and grim” lady, Miss Havisham, to “play” with her young adopted daughter. Throughout the course of the novel, Pip mentions the importance of social status in the Victorian era; Pip’s family is referred to as low and common, but this does not a particularly affect Pip’s life until after he visits Miss Havisham home. Once there, Pip gets a glimpse of what it is like to live in a high-class life. He meets Estella, Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter and is immediately drawn to the young, pretty girl. To Pip’s dismay, Estella immediately has an opinion of him and from that moment on Pip feels low about himself and ashamed about being brought up in a lower class family. “Throughout the beginning of the novel, Pip comes to believe that living a truly honorable life means transforming into an uncommon gentleman. Pip did what ever it would take to overcome his circumstances and decided to further educate him to assist in striving to rise above his social station. Just as Pip is trying to find himself in his world, so is The Fault In Our Stars leading character Hazel Grace. Hazel is a sixteen-year-old girl suffering from acute thyroid cancer. Hazel’s pursuit to find meaning in her life begins when she first meets Augustus Waters, also one who has gone through cancer5r; instantly the two are both attracted to one another. However, because Hazel’s cancer is inadvertently terminal, and the shadow of a premature death is constantly lingering on her shoulders, it in turn makes the thought of living a meaningful, whole, life more complicated. Throughout the novel Hazel more than anything wants to alleviate the emotional harm she knows her illness has caused to her parents and those close to her. Hazel is afraid of developing close relationships in fear that her impending death will have a colossal impact on her loved ones lives. For Pip and Hazel Grace, the quest of finding themselves is not a simple one. Directly following Pip’s first taste of high society life, Pip’s outlook presumes that high society is a loveless environment, where relationships are empty and based on money and power. Even though Pip knows deep down that this is not the right way to think and treat people, he still wants more than anything to be uncommon and gentlemen in order to hopefully gain the heart of his love, Estella. Pip knows that this out look is wrong and relationships are built with love and compassion like the relationships Pip has with Joe and Biddy, a kind-hearted, common girl whom Pip met while attending school. Pip struggles with what it truly means to be happy and live an honorable, worthy life with society’s perception of what it means. Pip essentially adopts society values despite his better judgment; he does this because his greatest fear is that Estella will only see him as a dirty, common, blacksmith. Remarkably, to Pips great luck, a stranger approached Joe and himself one day while they were at a local pub and told Pip that he bestows “Great Expectations”. The man called Mr. Jaggers informs Pip and Mr. Joe that an unknown benefactor has come forward to be a sponsor for Pip. The strange man told him that from that day

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