is the finest novel by Charles Dickens in terms of plot, structure, style and thematic elements. Written in 1861, it marks the high point of Dickens’ greatness as a novelist, particularly because of his increased sensitivity to life in Victorian England and the sham and hypocrisy he saw all around him. As a novel of social criticism, it is far more trenchant than anything Dickens wrote earlier. In the character of Pip, Dickens makes a serious attempt to present the ambivalence of the problem of good and evil. Pip is not just a young man of native goodness thrown on adversity but finally rising above it. He is a complicated mixture of good and bad – considerate and selfish, loving and callous, humble and ambitious, honest and self-deceiving. The core of Dickens’ universal theme lies inside Pip himself-as it does in all of us-and the triumph of good comes through Pip’s self-discovery-as it will for all of us.