Author | Lloyd Jones |
---|---|
Country | New Zealand |
Genre | Fiction |
Publication date | 2006 |
Pages | 256 pp (paperback) |
ISBN | 978-0-385-34107-3 |
Mister Pip (2006) is a novel by Lloyd Jones, a New Zealand author. It is named after the chief character in, and shaped by the plot of Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations .
The novel is set against the backdrop of the civil war on Bougainville Island during the early 1990s. Jones had covered the war in Bougainville as a journalist, but was unable to visit. He learned about atrocities committed there from a Papua New Guinean soldier. [1]
The novel is the story of a girl caught in the throes of war on the island of Bougainville. Matilda survives the war through the guidance of her devoted but strict Christian mother and her white teacher Mr Watts, and also, more importantly, through her connection with the fictional Pip, the protagonist of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Pip helps Matilda maintain a desire to live, especially after her mother, Mr Watts, and her island home all cease to exist.
The novel opens with a colourful description of Watts, whom the children call Pop-Eye (The first line of the book being: 'Everyone called him Pop Eye') due to his eyes that "stuck out further than anyone else's". He is married to Grace, a native of Bougainville, which explains why he remains long after most white men had abandoned the island. With military tension rising and the schoolroom growing over with creepers, Watts decides to take on the task of educating the children. Despite his claim to be limited in intelligence, he introduces the students to one of the greatest English authors, Charles Dickens.
Dolores, Matilda's overzealous Christian mother, expresses an extreme distrust of the teacher and his curriculum. She does everything in her power to ensure that her daughter's mind is not polluted by the strange white man, including making weekly visits to the classroom. She even goes as far as stealing and hiding Watts's Great Expectations book, an action that causes immense trouble when "Redskin" soldiers enter the village and find Pip's name carved in the sand. It is Matilda who wrote his name, and it is her guilt that makes her empathise with her mother, who refuses to give up the book as evidence that Pip is not a rebel but a fictional character. Convinced that Pip must be a spy who has been hidden from them, the soldiers destroy the houses. All they leave behind are smoking fragments of the village's former life.
As the tension escalates, a group of rebel soldiers returns to the village to question Watts. He agrees to explain himself over the course of seven nights, and proceeds to tell a story that entwines Pip's life with his own. Matilda develops an idea about why he returned to the island with his wife and stayed after all the other whites left. His wife has died, and Watts considers moving on and offers Matilda a chance to escape from the island. However, she would have to choose between Watts and her mother but before this can happen the rebels flee and the soldiers return.
The soldiers kill Watts, and when Matilda's mother speaks up she is taken away and raped. Matilda is almost raped, but her mother gives up her life to spare her. In the wake of surviving the slaughter of her village, her mother, and Watts, Matilda loses her will to live. She nearly drowns but is revived by the memory of Pip, who also narrowly escaped death. After clinging to a log, Matilda is picked up by the fisherman who had arranged to escape with Watts, and eventually reaches Australia. There she is reunited with her father and begins to pick up the pieces of her disrupted life. She comes to terms with the reality of Watts, who altered both the facts of his life and abridged the contents in Great Expectations in an effort to provide escape from the world, both for himself and for the children. She reveals her success in becoming a scholar and a Dickens expert and concludes her narrative by emphasizing the power of literature to offer escape and solace in the worst of times. Matilda becomes a teacher in Australia in order to fulfill her dream and educate people, but to also keep the memory of Watts alive.
The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007; [2] it won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best book in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific and the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry [3] [4] and 2008 it won the Kiriyama Prize for books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. In 2008, the American Library Association recognized it as one of the year's top ten books for young adults. [5]
Andrew Adamson wrote a film adaption of the novel, called Mr. Pip , which he also directed. [6] Hugh Laurie plays Watts. [7] It was filmed in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. On July 29 and 30 2011 filming was at Glendowie College, and at a flight training centre at Albert Street, Newmarket, Auckland. They started the post-production phase during November–December 2011 at Park Road Post, ready for it to come out 2012. The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012.
The trailer for the film adaptation was released in April 2013, and the film opened in cinemas on October 3. [8]
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman & Hall published the novel in three volumes.
Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
Miss Havisham is a character in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations (1861). She is a wealthy spinster, once jilted at the altar, who insists on wearing her wedding dress for the rest of her life. She lives in a ruined mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella. Dickens describes her as looking like "the witch of the place". In the novel, she schemes to have the young orphan, Pip, fall in love with Estella, so that Estella can "break his heart."
Estella Havisham is a significant character in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations.
"Pip" is the fourteenth episode in the fourth season of the American animated television series South Park. The 62nd episode of the series overall, it first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on November 29, 2000. Going by production order, it is the fifth episode of the fourth season instead of the fourteenth. The episode is a parody and comedic retelling of Charles Dickens's 1861 novel Great Expectations, and stars the South Park character Pip, who assumes the role of the protagonist of the novel, who is his eponym. "Pip" features no other regular characters from the show. The story is narrated in a live action parody of the anthology television series Masterpiece Theater, with the narrator played by Malcolm McDowell.
Great Expectations is a 1946 British drama film directed by David Lean, based on the 1861 novel by Charles Dickens and starring John Mills and Valerie Hobson. The supporting cast included Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Anthony Wager, Jean Simmons, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt and Alec Guinness.
Abel Magwitch is a major fictional character from Charles Dickens' 1861 novel Great Expectations.
Great Expectations is a 1998 American romantic drama film. A contemporary film adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel of the same name, co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hank Azaria, Robert De Niro, Anne Bancroft and Chris Cooper. It is known for having moved the setting of the original novel from 1812-1827 London to 1990s New York. The film is an abridged modernization of Dickens's 1861 novel, with the hero's name having been changed from "Pip" to "Finn," the character of "Miss Havisham" having been renamed "Nora Dinsmoor" and "Abel Magwitch" being renamed "Arthur Lustig." The film received mixed reviews.
Great Expectations is a British-American television serial based on Charles Dickens' 1861 novel of the same title. The serial was first broadcast in the US in three parts on The Disney Channel in 1989, and in the UK in six parts on the ITV network in 1991.
Lloyd David Jones is a New Zealand author. His novel Mister Pip (2006) won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Great Expectations is a 1934 adaptation of the 1861 Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Filmed with mostly American actors, it was the first sound version of the novel and was produced in Hollywood by Universal Studios and directed by Stuart Walker. It stars Phillips Holmes as Pip, Jane Wyatt as Estella and Florence Reed as Miss Havisham.
Great Expectations is a 1974 film made for television based on the Charles Dickens 1861 novel of the same name. It was directed by Joseph Hardy, with screenwriter Sherman Yellen and music by Maurice Jarre, starring Michael York as Pip, Simon Gipps-Kent as Young Pip and Sarah Miles as Estella. The production, for Transcontinental Films and ITC, was made for US television and released to cinemas in the UK. It broke with tradition by having the same actress play both the younger and older Estella. The film was shot by Freddie Young. It was filmed in Eastmancolor and it was entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival in 1975.
Great Expectations is a lost 1917 silent drama film directed by Robert G. Vignola and Paul West, based on the 1861 novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Jack Pickford stars as Pip and Louise Huff as Estella.
Compeyson is the main antagonist of Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations, a 'George Wickham'-esque man, whose criminal activities harmed two people, who in turn shaped much of protagonist Pip's life.
Great Expectations is a three-part BBC television drama adaptation by Sarah Phelps of the Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel of the same name, starring Ray Winstone as Magwitch, Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham, Douglas Booth as Pip, Vanessa Kirby as Estella and David Suchet as Jaggers. The adaptation was first broadcast on British television over the Christmas period in 2011.
Great Expectations is a 2012 British-American film adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1861 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Mike Newell, with the adapted screenplay by David Nicholls, and stars Jeremy Irvine, Helena Bonham Carter, Holliday Grainger, Ralph Fiennes and Robbie Coltrane. It was distributed by Lionsgate.
Mr. Pip is a 2012 film written and directed by Andrew Adamson and based on Lloyd Jones' novel Mister Pip. Hugh Laurie played Mr. Watts.
Great Expectations is a British television series which first aired on BBC 1 in 1967. It is an adaptation of the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, which follows a humble orphan suddenly becoming a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor.
Great Expectations is a historical fiction series developed by Steven Knight, based on the novel by Charles Dickens. It premiered on BBC One on 26 March 2023, followed by its USA premiere on FX on Hulu later the same day.