title: New York Jets

text: The Jets met the Giants in 1988 during the final game of the regular season. The Jets, with a 7–7–1 record, had little to lose as their hopes for playoff contention had vanished. The Giants, however, were contending for a playoff spot (they were 10–5 at that point) and a victory would have secured their spot and their division title. Although the six point favorites, the Giants were unable to overcome the Jets defense which sacked Giants quarterback Phil Simms eight times. With the Jets' victory and victories by the Rams and Eagles, the Giants were eliminated from playoff contention and the Jets gained respect in the eyes of many.


title: New York Jets

text: In spite of the big sibling rivalry that has resulted in trash talk between the players, both teams have formed an unexpected and consequently strong partnership sharing Giants Stadium for 26 years and MetLife Stadium, a venture in which both teams own a 50% share of the stadium. The rivalry regained much of its tension in the 2011 NFL season when the Jets and Giants met in Week 16. Both teams needed a victory to keep their playoffs hope alive and there was significant trash talk between Rex Ryan and his players and many of the Giants in the weeks leading up to the game. Ryan and Giants running back Brandon Jacobs reportedly came close to blows after the game, a 29–14 win by the Giants. The two teams met again on December 6, 2015, with the Jets coming from behind and winning 23–20 in overtime. To further boost it up, the Giants and Jets met again in 2019, with the Jets having the lead, Giants taking it, and the Jets retaking it to win 34–27.


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets redesigned their uniforms and primary logo for the 2019 season. The new team colors are a medium green that the franchise calls "Gotham Green," white, and black. The primary logo is a green football-shaped oval outlined in white, oriented horizontally, with the word "JETS" in thick, sans-serif italics positioned just below the horizontal axis with "NEW YORK" above it in smaller letters, and a miniature football graphic at bottom center partially covering the lower portion of the "E" and "T".


title: New York Jets

text: The primary uniform consists of green jerseys with white numerals and white jerseys with green numerals, green and white pants, and green socks. The numerals are in a new sans-serif block-style font and have thin black outlines, with "NEW YORK" in thick sans-serif italics above the numerals on the front, TV numerals on the upper shoulders, and the player's name in sans-serif block letters on the back, in either green or white. The jerseys have opposite-colored stripes around the shoulder that taper toward the collar, and the pants have opposite-colored stripes on each side that taper toward the lower thigh. The team also has a black alternate uniform with white numerals outlined in green, green stripes and black socks.


title: New York Jets

text: The helmet is a deep metallic emerald green with a black facemask; the decal on each side is a secondary logo, consisting of the primary logo's "JETS" wordmark and football graphic.


title: New York Jets

text: The team's original uniforms, as the Titans of New York in 1960, were navy blue with old gold numerals, gold pants with two parallel blue stripes on each side, and navy blue helmets with a single gold stripe down the center and no logo decals. The white jerseys had navy blue numerals. In 1961, the Titans added UCLA-style shoulder stripes (gold and white on the blue jerseys, gold and navy blue on the white jerseys), changed the pants striping to a blue stripe flanked by white stripes, and employed a somewhat brighter shade of gold.


title: New York Jets

text: When the Titans became the Jets in 1963, navy and gold were abandoned in favor of kelly green and white. The jerseys had opposite-colored sleeves with thick stripes on the shoulders and cuffs, above and below the TV numerals. The pants were white with two parallel green stripes on each side. The new helmets were white with a single green stripe down the center; the logo on each side was a silhouette of a jet airplane in green, with the word "JETS" in thick white sans-serif italics along the fuselage. In 1964, the single green stripe became two parallel stripes, and the jet-plane decal was replaced with a white football shape outlined in green, with the word "JETS" in thick green sans-serif italics in front of "NY" in green outline serif lettering, and a miniature football at bottom center. The decals were difficult to see from a distance (or on television), so the colors were reversed in 1965.


title: New York Jets

text: This design remained largely unchanged through 1977, apart from some variations to the numeral and lettering typefaces, the angle of the helmet decals, and adjustments to the shoulder and sleeve striping due to changes in NFL jersey tailoring and materials.


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets' first major design change was made for the 1978 season. The kelly green and white color scheme was retained; the new helmets were solid green with white facemasks, and a stylized "JETS" wordmark in white on each side. The mark featured angular lettering and a silhouette of a modern jet airplane extending horizontally to the right from the top of the "J" above the "ETS". The jerseys featured large TV numerals on the shoulders and two thick parallel stripes on the sleeves, while the pants had a single green stripe from hip to knee on each side. In 1990, the Jets modified this design by adding thin black outlines to the numerals, lettering, stripes and helmet decals, changing the facemasks from white to black, and adding a set of green pants to be worn with the white jerseys.


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets were the first NFL team to wear a "throwback" uniform, in 1993 for a home game against the Cincinnati Bengals celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 1968 championship team. The jersey and pants mimicked the 1963–77 design, although the team wore its regular green helmets with a white-outlined version of the 1965–77 logo decal. In 1994, as part of the NFL's 75th Anniversary celebration, the Jets wore both home and road versions of this uniform in select games, again using their regular green helmets with the 1965–77 logo but with two parallel white stripes down the center.


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets adopted a new uniform and logo design in 1998, a modernization of the 1960s–1970s set. Green pants were added in 2002, and have been worn with both the white and green jerseys.


title: New York Jets

text: In 2007, the team introduced a new "throwback" uniform, evoking the original Titans of New York and combining elements of the 1960 and 1961–62 uniforms, with navy blue helmets and jerseys, old gold numerals and helmet stripes, gold and white shoulder stripes, and gold pants with blue and white stripes on each side. These uniforms appeared again in 2008, 2009 and 2011, with a white jersey variation also appearing in 2009 as part of the NFL's celebration of the American Football League's 50th anniversary.


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets unveiled new jerseys and an updated logo for the 2019 season. The jerseys are colored "Gotham Green" for home and "Spotlight White" for away. They also reintroduced black as a team color for the first time since 1997.


title: New York Jets

text: The original Jets Flag Crew was established in 2006. In 2007, the group underwent an expansion and was renamed the Jets Flight Crew. The squad regularly performs choreographed routines during the team's home contests. Auditions have been held annually since their inception to attract new members.


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets Junior Flight Crew was established in 2010, offering children the opportunity to train with the Flight Crew while improving their "talent and abilities in a non-competitive environment."


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets' current flagship radio station is WEPN 98.7 ESPN with Bob Wischusen as the play-by-play announcer and former Jet Marty Lyons, of the Sack Exchange, as the color analyst.


title: New York Jets

text: Any preseason games not nationally televised are shown on WCBS-TV. SportsNet New York, which serves as the official home of the Jets, airs over 250 hours of "exclusive, in depth" material on the team in high definition.


title: New York Jets

text: Monday Night Football games are televised in a simulcast with ESPN by either sister station WABC-TV, or WPIX-TV if WABC chooses to waive the game to another station to carry regularly scheduled programming. Thursday Night Football carriage of a Jets game is incumbent on the producing network for that game (on FOX), which is also simulcast by NFL Network.


title: New York Jets

text: This is a partial list of the Jets' last five completed seasons. For the full season-by-season franchise results, see List of New York Jets seasons.


title: New York Jets

text: "Note: The Finish, Wins, Losses, and Ties columns list regular season results and exclude any postseason play."


title: New York Jets

text: Ewbank, Hill, Martin, Mawae, Maynard, and Namath are recognized based upon their achievements with the Jets. Ewbank is also recognized based upon his achievements with the Baltimore Colts, coaching them to NFL championships in 1958 and 1959. Riggins is recognized primarily for his seasons with the Washington Redskins (1976–1979, 1981–1985), as is Monk (1980–1993), who won three Super Bowl championships with Washington. Lott is in the Hall of Fame primarily for his exploits as a member of the San Francisco 49ers. Baugh and Turner are recognized based upon their achievements as players with other teams, rather than their head coaching stints with the Jets. While Parcells reversed the fortunes of the Jets, he had major impact for the New York Giants, coaching them to two Super Bowl victories. Wolf only had a brief stint with the Jets between 1990 and 1991, while most of his major contributions occurred as an executive and player personnel director with the Oakland Raiders (1963–1974, 1979–1989), and later as General Manager of the Green Bay Packers (1991–2001). Favre only played one season as a member of the Jets in 2008, between most of his career with the Packers (1992–2007) and his last two NFL seasons with the Minnesota Vikings (2009–2010).


title: New York Jets

text: Additionally, the Jets have not reissued the #80 jersey of Wayne Chrebet (WR, 1995–2005) since he suffered a career-ending concussion in the 2005 season, and it has long been understood that it will not be worn again in the foreseeable future. Along similar lines, Byrd's #90 had not been reissued since he suffered a career-ending neck injury in 1992, and it had been understood long before his number was formally retired that no Jet would ever wear it again. Further, the Jets have not reissued #24 since the release of Darrelle Revis in 2016.


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets established a Ring of Honor on July 20, 2010, to commemorate former players. Each season, players will be nominated by an internal committee and then inducted into the Ring. There is no specific amount of honorees to be selected each year.


title: New York Jets

text: The following Titans/Jets were selected to the American Football League All-Time Team on January 14, 1970. The first and second teams were determined by a panel of members of the AFL's Hall of Fame Board of Selectors: Bold indicates those elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.


title: New York Jets

text: New York announced their official All-Time Four Decade team in 2003, which was determined by the fans of the team. Bold indicates those elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.


title: New York Jets

text: Perhaps the most famous of the Jets' first round picks came in 1965 when they selected Alabama quarterback Joe Namath who boosted the Jets into the national spotlight with his boisterous personality and lifestyle. His physical talents on the field helped improve the Jets' fortunes, leading them to victory over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Though injuries hampered the latter part of Namath's career, he is best remembered, according to former teammate John Dockery, as "a guy that came along and broke a lot of the conventions." Namath was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1985.


title: New York Jets

text: The Jets have had a history of selecting players who turned out to be draft busts. Perhaps one of the most disappointing players in Jets history was running back Blair Thomas. Thomas, who averaged 5.4 yards per carry at Penn State, was an intriguing prospect the Jets were interested in utilizing to help their cumbersome offense. Confident in their decision, the Jets drafted Thomas with the second overall pick in 1990, expecting him to be a solid player for years to come. Thomas ran for only 620 yards in 1990, and failed to meet the high expectations. By the time Thomas left the team as an unrestricted free agent in 1993, he had rushed for 2,009 yards and only five touchdowns. The 2008 first round pick, defensive lineman Vernon Gholston, followed a similar path, failing to record a sack during his three-year tenure with the team.


title: New York Jets

text: Kyle Brady in 1995, who was drafted ahead of Warren Sapp, one of many disappointments during Rich Kotite's tenure as coach. However, in the same draft, the Jets did better with Hugh Douglas. Dewayne Robertson was a fourth overall selection in 2003 by the Jets. The defensive tackle out of Kentucky failed to make a big impact with the team. He accounted for 14.5 sacks in his 5 seasons with the team, a rather underwhelming player given what the Jets had hoped for. At quarterback, the Jets found themselves dealing with the consequences of drafting University of Alabama QB Richard Todd in 1976. In his tenure with the Jets, he threw for more interceptions than he did touchdowns. In the '81 season, the Jets played vs the Miami Dolphins in the AFC Championship Game. Todd threw for 5 interceptions and the Jets lost the game. A year later, Todd would be traded to the New Orleans Saints. The most recent bust, Dee Milliner, was drafted by the team in 2013. Milliner played his college career at the University of Alabama and had high expectations after being drafted. Lasting just 3 years with the team, Milliner's career was plagued by injuries and inconsistency, recording only 3 interceptions during his brief Jets career.


title: New York Jets

text: In the 2013 and 2014 seasons, one of the Jets' strongest units was their defensive line, manned by 1st Round selections Muhammad Wilkerson (2011) and Sheldon Richardson (2013). In 2013, Wilkerson ended the season with 10.5 sacks, matching the last Jets player to have more than 10 sacks in a single season, John Abraham in 2005. Also that year, Richardson was honored with an award from the AP for Defensive Rookie of the Year. The Jets' run defense was stout with all three in the line up, finishing fifth as a team in rushing yards allowed in 2014.


title: New York Jets

text: In the 2017 NFL Draft, the Jets selected Jamal Adams with the sixth overall pick out of LSU. Adams had a strong start to his early career, making the Pro Bowl in the 2018 season and winning the Defensive MVP Award alongside Kansas City Chiefs' quarterback Patrick Mahomes as the Offensive MVP.


title: New York Jets

text: In the 2019 NFL Draft, the Jets selected Quinnen Williams from Alabama with the third overall pick. Williams had been touted as the best overall prospect leading up to the draft, being compared to defensive tackle superstar Aaron Donald. Williams ended up being the final first-round pick by then general manager Mike Maccagnan, who was fired shortly after the draft. Williams struggled in his rookie year with injuries and inconsistent play, but showed promise as a defensive anchor in his 2020 season: he recorded 7.0 sacks and 55 total tackles before being added to the Injured Reserved list in the final weeks of the season.


title: New York Jets

text: In the 2020 NFL Draft, the Jets selected offensive tackle Mekhi Becton from Louisville with the eleventh overall pick.


title: Great Expectations

text: Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a "bildungsroman"; a coming-of-age story). 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 and Hall published the novel in three volumes.


title: Great Expectations

text: The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. "Great Expectations" is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. "Great Expectations", which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media.


title: Great Expectations

text: Upon its release, the novel received near-universal acclaim. Although Dickens's contemporary Thomas Carlyle referred to it disparagingly as "that Pip nonsense", he nevertheless reacted to each fresh instalment with "roars of laughter". Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, describing it as "all of one piece and consistently truthful". During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to "Great Expectations" and its sales; when the plot first formed in his mind, he called it "a very fine, new and grotesque idea".


title: Great Expectations

text: In the 21st century, the novel retains good ratings among literary critics and in 2003 it was ranked 17th on the BBC's The Big Read poll.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip is an orphan, about seven years old, who lives with his hot-tempered older sister and her kindly blacksmith husband Joe Gargery on the coastal marshes of Kent. On Christmas Eve 1812, Pip is visiting the graves of his parents and siblings. There, he unexpectedly encounters an escaped convict who threatens him with death if he does not bring back food and tools. Terrified, Pip steals a file from among Joe's tools and a pie and brandy that were meant for Christmas dinner, which he delivers to the convict.


title: Great Expectations

text: That evening, Pip's sister is about to look for the missing pie when soldiers arrive and ask Joe to mend some shackles. Joe and Pip accompany them into the marshes to recapture the convict, who is fighting with another escaped convict. The first convict confesses to stealing food, clearing Pip.


title: Great Expectations

text: A few years pass. Miss Havisham, a wealthy and reclusive spinster, asks Mr Pumblechook, a relation of the Gargerys, to find a boy to visit her. She was jilted at the altar and still wears her old wedding dress and lives in dilapidated Satis House. Pip visits Miss Havisham and falls in love with Estella, her adopted daughter. Estella is aloof and hostile to Pip, which Miss Havisham encourages. During one visit, another boy picks a fistfight with Pip, where Pip easily gains the upper hand. Estella watches, and allows Pip to kiss her afterwards. Pip visits Miss Havisham regularly, until he is old enough to learn a trade.


title: Great Expectations

text: Joe accompanies Pip for the last visit to Miss Havisham, at which she gives the money for Pip to be bound as an apprentice blacksmith. Joe's surly assistant, Dolge Orlick, is envious of Pip and dislikes Mrs Joe. When Pip and Joe are away from the house, Joe's wife is brutally attacked, leaving her unable to speak or do her work. Orlick is suspected of the attack. Mrs Joe changes and becomes kindhearted after the attack. Pip's former schoolmate Biddy joins the household to help with her care.


title: Great Expectations

text: Four years into Pip's apprenticeship, Mr Jaggers, a lawyer, informs him that he has been provided with money from an anonymous patron, allowing him to become a gentleman. Pip is to leave for London, but presuming that Miss Havisham is his benefactress, he first visits her.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip sets up house in London at Barnard's Inn with Herbert Pocket, the son of his tutor, Matthew Pocket, who is a cousin of Miss Havisham. Pip realizes Herbert is the boy he fought with years ago. Herbert tells Pip how Miss Havisham was defrauded and deserted by her fiancé. Pip meets fellow pupils, Bentley Drummle, a brute of a man from a wealthy noble family, and Startop, who is agreeable. Jaggers disburses the money Pip needs. During a visit, Pip meets Jaggers's housekeeper Molly, a former convict.


title: Great Expectations

text: When Joe visits Pip at Barnard's Inn, Pip is ashamed to be seen with him. Joe relays a message from Miss Havisham that Estella will be at Satis House for a visit. Pip returns there to meet Estella and is encouraged by Miss Havisham, but he avoids visiting Joe. He is disquieted to see Orlick now in service to Miss Havisham. He mentions his misgivings to Jaggers, who promises Orlick's dismissal. Back in London, Pip and Herbert exchange their romantic secrets: Pip adores Estella and Herbert is engaged to Clara. Pip meets Estella when she is sent to Richmond to be introduced into society.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip and Herbert build up debts. Mrs Joe dies and Pip returns to his village for the funeral. Pip's income is fixed at £500 () per annum when he comes of age at twenty-one. With the help of Jaggers' clerk, Wemmick, Pip plans to help advance Herbert's future prospects by anonymously securing him a position with the shipbroker, Clarriker's. Pip takes Estella to Satis House. She and Miss Havisham quarrel over Estella's coldness. In London, Bentley Drummle outrages Pip, by proposing a toast to Estella. Later, at an Assembly Ball in Richmond, Pip witnesses Estella meeting Bentley Drummle and warns her about him; she replies that she has no qualms about entrapping him.


title: Great Expectations

text: A week after he turns 23 years old, Pip learns that his benefactor is the convict he encountered in the churchyard, Abel Magwitch, who had been transported to New South Wales after being captured. He has become wealthy after gaining his freedom there, but cannot return to England on pain of death. However, he returns to see Pip, who was the motivation for all his success.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip is shocked, and stops taking Magwitch's money. He and Herbert Pocket devise a plan for Magwitch to escape from England.


title: Great Expectations

text: Magwitch shares his past history with Pip, and reveals that the escaped convict whom he fought in the churchyard was Compeyson, the fraudster who had deserted Miss Havisham.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip returns to Satis Hall to visit Estella and meets Bentley Drummle, who has also come to see her and now has Orlick as his servant. Pip accuses Miss Havisham of misleading him about his benefactor. She admits to doing so, but says that her plan was to annoy her relatives. Pip declares his love to Estella, who coldly tells him that she plans on marrying Drummle. Heartbroken, Pip walks back to London, where Wemmick warns him that Compeyson is seeking him. Pip and Herbert continue preparations for Magwitch's escape.


title: Great Expectations

text: At Jaggers's house for dinner, Wemmick tells Pip how Jaggers acquired his maidservant, Molly, rescuing her from the gallows when she was accused of murder.


title: Great Expectations

text: Then, full of remorse, Miss Havisham tells Pip how the infant Estella was brought to her by Jaggers and raised by her to be unfeeling and heartless. She knows nothing about Estella's parentage. She also tells Pip that Estella is now married. She gives Pip money to pay for Herbert Pocket's position at Clarriker's, and asks for his forgiveness. As Pip is about to leave, Miss Havisham's dress catches fire. Pip saves her, injuring himself in the process. She eventually dies from her injuries, lamenting her manipulation of Estella and Pip. Pip now realises that Estella is the daughter of Molly and Magwitch. When confronted about this, Jaggers discourages Pip from acting on his suspicions.


title: Great Expectations

text: A few days before Magwitch's planned escape, Pip is tricked by an anonymous letter into going to a sluice-house near his old home, where he is seized by Orlick, who intends to murder him and freely admits to injuring Pip's sister. As Pip is about to be struck by a hammer, Herbert Pocket and Startop arrive and save Pip's life. The three of them pick up Magwitch to row him to the steamboat for Hamburg, but they are met by a police boat carrying Compeyson, who has offered to identify Magwitch. Magwitch seizes Compeyson, and they fight in the river. Seriously injured, Magwitch is taken by the police. Compeyson's body is found later.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip is aware that Magwitch's fortune will go to the Crown after his trial. Herbert, who is preparing to move to Cairo, Egypt, to manage Clarriker's office there, offers Pip a position there. Pip always visits Magwitch in the prison hospital as he awaits trial, and on Magwitch's deathbed tells him that his daughter Estella is alive. After Herbert's departure for Cairo, Pip falls ill in his room, and faces arrest for debt. However, Joe nurses Pip back to health and pays off his debt. When Pip begins to recover, Joe slips away. Pip then returns to propose to Biddy, only to find that she has married Joe. Pip asks Joe's forgiveness, promises to repay him and leaves for Cairo. There he shares lodgings with Herbert and Clara, and eventually advances to become third in the company. Only then does Herbert learn that Pip paid for his position in the firm.


title: Great Expectations

text: After working eleven years in Egypt, Pip returns to England and visits Joe, Biddy, and their son, Pip Jr. Then, in the ruins of Satis House, he meets the widowed Estella, who asks Pip to forgive her, assuring him that her misfortune, and her abusive marriage to Drummle until his death, has opened her heart. As Pip takes Estella's hand, and they leave the moonlit ruins, he sees "no shadow of another parting from her."


title: Great Expectations

text: As Dickens began writing "Great Expectations", he undertook a series of hugely popular and remunerative reading tours. His domestic life had, however, disintegrated in the late 1850s and he had separated from his wife, Catherine Dickens, and was having a secret affair with the much younger Ellen Ternan. It has been suggested that the icy teasing of the character Estella is based on Ellen Ternan's reluctance to become Dickens's mistress.


title: Great Expectations

text: In his "Book of Memoranda", begun in 1855, Dickens wrote names for possible characters: Magwitch, Provis, Clarriker, Compey, Pumblechook, Orlick, Gargery, Wopsle, Skiffins, some of which became familiar in "Great Expectations". There is also a reference to a "knowing man", a possible sketch of Bentley Drummle. Another evokes a house full of "Toadies and Humbugs", foreshadowing the visitors to Satis House in chapter 11. Margaret Cardwell discovered the "premonition" of "Great Expectations" from a 25 September 1855 letter from Dickens to W. H. Wills, in which Dickens speaks of recycling an "odd idea" from the Christmas special "A House to Let" and "the pivot round which my next book shall revolve." The "odd idea" concerns an individual who "retires to an old lonely house…resolved to shut out the world and hold no communion with it."


title: Great Expectations

text: In an 8 August 1860 letter to Thomas Carlyle, Dickens reported his agitation whenever he prepared a new book. A month later, in a letter to John Forster, Dickens announced that he just had a new idea.


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens was pleased with the idea, calling it "such a very fine, new and grotesque idea" in a letter to Forster. He planned to write "a little piece", a "grotesque tragi-comic conception", about a young hero who befriends an escaped convict, who then makes a fortune in Australia and anonymously bequeaths his property to the hero. In the end, the hero loses the money because it is forfeited to the Crown. In his biography of Dickens, Forster wrote that in the early idea "was the germ of Pip and Magwitch, which at first he intended to make the groundwork of a tale in the old twenty-number form." Dickens presented the relationship between Pip and Magwitch pivotal to "Great Expectations" but without Miss Havisham, Estella, or other characters he later created.


title: Great Expectations

text: As the idea and Dickens's ambition grew, he began writing. However, in September, the weekly "All the Year Round" saw its sales fall, and its flagship publication, "A Day's Ride" by Charles Lever, lost favour with the public. Dickens "called a council of war", and believed that to save the situation, "the one thing to be done was for [him] to strike in." The "very fine, new and grotesque idea" became the magazine's new support: weeklies, five hundred pages, just over one year (1860–1861), thirty-six episodes, starting 1 December. The magazine continued to publish Lever's novel until its completion on 23 March 1861, but it became secondary to "Great Expectations". Immediately, sales resumed, and critics responded positively, as exemplified by "The Times"s praise: ""Great Expectations" is not, indeed, [Dickens's] best work, but it is to be ranked among his happiest."


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens, whose health was not the best, felt "The planning from week to week was unimaginably difficult" but persevered. He thought he had found "a good name", decided to use the first person "throughout", and thought the beginning was "excessively droll": "I have put a child and a good-natured foolish man, in relations that seem to me very funny." Four weekly episodes were "ground off the wheel" in October 1860, and apart from one reference to the "bondage" of his heavy task, the months passed without the anguished cries that usually accompanied the writing of his novels. He did not even use the "Number Plans" or "Mems"; he had only a few notes on the characters' ages, the tide ranges for chapter 54, and the draft of an ending. In late December, Dickens wrote to Mary Boyle that ""Great Expectations" [is] a very great success and universally liked."


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens gave six readings from 14 March to 18 April 1861, and in May, Dickens took a few days' holiday in Dover. On the eve of his departure, he took some friends and family members for a trip by boat from Blackwall to Southend-on-Sea. Ostensibly for pleasure, the mini-cruise was actually a working session for Dickens to examine banks of the river in preparation for the chapter devoted to Magwitch's attempt to escape. Dickens then revised Herbert Pocket's appearance, no doubt, asserts Margaret Cardwell, to look more like his son Charley. On 11 June 1861, Dickens wrote to Macready that "Great Expectations" had been completed and on 15 June, asked the editor to prepare the novel for publication.


title: Great Expectations

text: Following comments by Edward Bulwer-Lytton that the ending was too sad, Dickens rewrote it prior to publication. The ending set aside by Dickens has Pip, who is still single, briefly see Estella in London; after becoming Bentley Drummle's widow, she has remarried. It appealed to Dickens due to its originality: "[the] winding up will be away from all such things as they conventionally go." Dickens revised the ending for publication so that Pip meets Estella in the ruins of Satis House, she is a widow and he is single. His changes at the conclusion of the novel did not quite end either with the final weekly part or the first bound edition, because Dickens further changed the last sentence in the amended 1868 version from "I could see the shadow of no parting from her" to "I saw no shadow of another parting from her". As Pip uses litotes, "no shadow of another parting", it is ambiguous whether Pip and Estella marry or Pip remains single. Angus Calder, writing for an edition in the Penguin English Library, believed the less definite phrasing of the amended 1868 version perhaps hinted at a buried meaning: 'at this happy moment, I did not see the shadow of our subsequent parting looming over us.'


title: Great Expectations

text: In a letter to Forster, Dickens explained his decision to alter the draft ending: "You will be surprised to hear that I have changed the end of "Great Expectations" from and after Pip's return to Joe's ... Bulwer, who has been, as I think you know, extraordinarily taken with the book, strongly urged it upon me, after reading the proofs, and supported his views with such good reasons that I have resolved to make the change. I have put in as pretty a little piece of writing as I could, and I have no doubt the story will be more acceptable through the alteration."


title: Great Expectations

text: This discussion between Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton and Forster has provided the basis for much discussion on Dickens's underlying views for this famous novel. Earle Davis, in his 1963 study of Dickens, wrote that "it would be an inadequate moral point to deny Pip any reward after he had shown a growth of character," and that "Eleven years might change Estella too." John Forster felt that the original ending was "more consistent" and "more natural" but noted the new ending's popularity. George Gissing called that revision "a strange thing, indeed, to befall Dickens" and felt that "Great Expectations" would have been perfect had Dickens not altered the ending in deference to Bulwer-Lytton.


title: Great Expectations

text: In contrast, John Hillis-Miller stated that Dickens's personality was so assertive that Bulwer-Lytton had little influence, and welcomed the revision: "The mists of infatuation have cleared away, [Estella and Pip] can be joined." Earl Davis notes that G. B. Shaw published the novel in 1937 for "The Limited Editions Club" with the first ending and that "The Rinehart Edition" of 1979 presents both endings.


title: Great Expectations

text: George Orwell wrote, "Psychologically the latter part of "Great Expectations" is about the best thing Dickens ever did," but, like John Forster and several early 20th century writers, including George Bernard Shaw, felt that the original ending was more consistent with the draft, as well as the natural working out of the tale. Modern literary criticism is split over the matter.


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens and Wills co-owned "All the Year Round", one 75%, the other 25%. Since Dickens was his own publisher, he did not require a contract for his own works. Although intended for weekly publication, "Great Expectations" was divided into nine monthly sections, with new pagination for each. "Harper's Weekly" published the novel from 24 November 1860 to 5 August 1861 in the US and "All the Year Round" published it from 1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861 in the UK. "Harper's" paid £1,000 () for publication rights. Dickens welcomed a contract with "Tauchnitz" 4 January 1861 for publication in English for the European continent.


title: Great Expectations

text: Publications in "Harper's Weekly" were accompanied by forty illustrations by John McLenan; however, this is the only Dickens work published in "All the Year Round" without illustrations.


title: Great Expectations

text: Robert L Patten identifies four American editions in 1861 and sees the proliferation of publications in Europe and across the Atlantic as "extraordinary testimony" to "Great Expectations"s popularity. Chapman and Hall published the first edition in three volumes in 1861, five subsequent reprints between 6 July and 30 October, and a one-volume edition in 1862. The "bargain" edition was published in 1862, the Library Edition in 1864, and the Charles Dickens edition in 1868. To this list, Paul Schlicke adds "two meticulous scholarly editions", one Clarendon Press published in 1993 with an introduction by Margaret Cardwell and another with an introduction by Edgar Rosenberg, published by Norton in 1999. The novel was published with one ending (visible in the four online editions listed in the External links at the end of this article). In some 20th century editions, the novel ends as originally published in 1867, and in an afterword, the ending Dickens did not publish, along with a brief story of how a friend persuaded him to a happier ending for Pip, is presented to the reader (for example, 1987 audio edition by Recorded Books).


title: Great Expectations

text: In 1862, Marcus Stone, son of Dickens's old friend, the painter Frank Stone, was invited to create eight woodcuts for the Library Edition. According to Paul Schlicke, these illustrations are mediocre yet were included in the Charles Dickens edition, and Stone created illustrations for Dickens's subsequent novel, "Our Mutual Friend". Later, Henry Mathew Brock also illustrated "Great Expectations" and a 1935 edition of "A Christmas Carol", along with other artists, such as John McLenan, F. A. Fraser, and Harry Furniss.


title: Great Expectations

text: Robert L. Patten estimates that "All the Year Round" sold 100,000 copies of "Great Expectations" each week, and Mudie, the largest circulating library, which purchased about 1,400 copies, stated that at least 30 people read each copy. Aside from the dramatic plot, the Dickensian humour also appealed to readers. Dickens wrote to Forster in October 1860 that "You will not have to complain of the want of humour as in the "Tale of Two Cities"," an opinion Forster supports, finding that "Dickens's humour, not less than his creative power, was at its best in this book." Moreover, according to Paul Schlicke, readers found the best of Dickens's older and newer writing styles.


title: Great Expectations

text: Overall, "Great Expectations" received near universal acclaim. Not all reviews were favourable, however; Margaret Oliphant's review, published May 1862 in "Blackwood's Magazine", vilified the novel. Critics in the 19th and 20th centuries hailed it as one of Dickens's greatest successes although often for conflicting reasons: G. K. Chesterton admired the novel's optimism; Edmund Wilson its pessimism; Humphry House in 1941 emphasized its social context. In 1974, Jerome H. Buckley saw it as a "Bildungsroman", writing a chapter on Dickens and two of his major protagonists (David Copperfield and Pip) in his 1974 book on the Bildungsroman in Victorian writing. John Hillis Miller wrote in 1958 that Pip is the archetype of all Dickensian heroes. In 1970, Q. D. Leavis suggested "How We Must Read "Great Expectations"." In 1984, Peter Brooks, in the wake of Jacques Derrida, offered a deconstructionist reading. The most profound analyst, according to Paul Schlicke, is probably Julian Moynahan, who, in a 1964 essay surveying the hero's guilt, made Orlick "Pip's double, alter ego and dark mirror image." Schlicke also names Anny Sadrin's extensive 1988 study as the "most distinguished."


title: Great Expectations

text: In 2015, the BBC polled book critics outside the UK about novels by British authors; they ranked "Great Expectations" fourth on the list of the 100 Greatest British Novels. Earlier, in its 2003 poll The Big Read concerning the reading taste of the British public, "Great Expectations" was voted 17th out of the top 100 novels chosen by survey participants.


title: Great Expectations

text: "Great Expectations"s single most obvious literary predecessor is Dickens's earlier first-person narrator-protagonist "David Copperfield". The two novels trace the psychological and moral development of a young boy to maturity, his transition from a rural environment to the London metropolis, the vicissitudes of his emotional development, and the exhibition of his hopes and youthful dreams and their metamorphosis, through a rich and complex first person narrative. Dickens was conscious of this similarity and, before undertaking his new manuscript, reread "David Copperfield" to avoid repetition.


title: Great Expectations

text: The two books both detail homecoming. Although "David Copperfield" is based on some of Dickens's personal experiences, "Great Expectations" provides, according to Paul Schlicke, "the more spiritual and intimate autobiography." Even though several elements hint at the setting – Miss Havisham, partly inspired by a Parisian duchess, whose residence was always closed and in darkness, surrounded by "a dead green vegetable sea", recalling Satis House, aspects of Restoration House that inspired Satis House, and the nearby countryside bordering Chatham and Rochester. No place name is mentioned, nor a specific time period, which is generally indicated by, among other elements, older coaches, the title "His Majesty" in reference to George III, and the old London Bridge prior to the 1824–1831 reconstruction.


title: Great Expectations

text: The theme of homecoming reflects events in Dickens's life, several years prior to the publication of "Great Expectations". In 1856, he bought Gad's Hill Place in Higham, Kent, which he had dreamed of living in as a child, and moved there from faraway London two years later. In 1858, in a painful marriage breakdown, he separated from Catherine Dickens, his wife of twenty-three years. The separation alienated him from some of his closest friends, such as Mark Lemon. He quarrelled with Bradbury and Evans, who had published his novels for fifteen years. In early September 1860, in a field behind Gad's Hill, Dickens burned almost all of his correspondence, sparing only letters on business matters. He stopped publishing the weekly "Household Words" at the summit of its popularity and replaced it with "All the Year Round".


title: Great Expectations

text: "The Uncommercial Traveller", short stories, and other texts Dickens began publishing in his new weekly in 1859 reflect his nostalgia, as seen in "Dullborough Town" and "Nurses' Stories". According to Paul Schlicke, "it is hardly surprising that the novel Dickens wrote at this time was a return to roots, set in the part of England in which he grew up, and in which he had recently resettled."


title: Great Expectations

text: Margaret Cardwell draws attention to Chops the Dwarf from Dickens's 1858 Christmas story "Going into Society", who, as the future Pip does, entertains the illusion of inheriting a fortune and becomes disappointed upon achieving his social ambitions. In another vein, Harry Stone thinks that Gothic and magical aspects of "Great Expectations" were partly inspired by Charles Mathews's "At Home", which was presented in detail in "Household Words" and its monthly supplement "Household Narrative". Stone also asserts that "The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices", written in collaboration with Wilkie Collins after their walking tour of Cumberland during September 1857 and published in "Household Words" from 3 to 31 October of the same year, presents certain strange locations and a passionate love, foreshadowing "Great Expectations".


title: Great Expectations

text: Beyond its biographical and literary aspects, "Great Expectations" appears, according to Robin Gilmour, as "a representative fable of the age". Dickens was aware that the novel "speaks" to a generation applying, at most, the principle of "self help" which was believed to have increased the order of daily life. That the hero Pip aspires to improve, not through snobbery, but through the Victorian conviction of education, social refinement, and materialism, was seen as a noble and worthy goal. However, by tracing the origins of Pip's "great expectations" to crime, deceit and even banishment to the colonies, Dickens unfavourably compares the new generation to the previous one of Joe Gargery, which Dickens portrays as less sophisticated but especially rooted in sound values, presenting an oblique criticism of his time.


title: Great Expectations

text: The narrative structure of "Great Expectations" is influenced by the fact that it was first published as weekly episodes in a periodical. This required short chapters, centred on a single subject, and an almost mathematical structure.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip's story is told in three stages: his childhood and early youth in Kent, where he dreams of rising above his humble station; his time in London after receiving "great expectations"; and then finally his disillusionment on discovering the source of his fortune, followed by his slow realisation of the vanity of his false values. These three stages are further divided into twelve parts of equal length. This symmetry contributes to the impression of completion, which has often been commented on. George Gissing, for example, when comparing Joe Gargery and Dan'l Peggotty (from "David Copperfield"), preferred the former, because he is a stronger character, who lives "in a world, not of melodrama, but of everyday cause and effect." G. B. Shaw also commented on the novel's structure, describing it as "compactly perfect", and Algernon Swinburne stated, "The defects in it are as nearly imperceptible as spots on the sun or shadow on a sunlit sea." A contributing factor is "the briskness of the narrative tone."


title: Great Expectations

text: Further, beyond the chronological sequences and the weaving of several storylines into a tight plot, the sentimental setting and morality of the characters also create a pattern. The narrative structure of "Great Expectations" has two main elements: firstly that of "foster parents", Miss Havisham, Magwitch, and Joe, and secondly that of "young people", Estella, Pip and Biddy. There is a further organizing element that can be labelled "Dangerous Lovers", which includes Compeyson, Bentley Drummle and Orlick. Pip is the centre of this web of love, rejection and hatred. Dickens contrasts this "dangerous love" with the relationship of Biddy and Joe, which grows from friendship to marriage.


title: Great Expectations

text: This is "the general frame of the novel". The term "love" is generic, applying it to both Pip's true love for Estella and the feelings Estella has for Drummle, which are based on a desire for social advancement. Similarly, Estella rejects Magwitch because of her contempt for everything that appears below what she believes to be her social status.


title: Great Expectations

text: "Great Expectations" has an unhappy ending, since most characters suffer physically, psychologically or both, or die—often violently—while suffering. Happy resolutions remain elusive, while hate thrives. The only happy ending is Biddy and Joe's marriage and the birth of their two children, since the final reconciliations, except that between Pip and Magwitch, do not alter the general order. Though Pip extirpates the web of hatred, the first unpublished ending denies him happiness while Dickens's revised second ending, in the published novel, leaves his future uncertain.


title: Great Expectations

text: Julian Moynahan argues that the reader can better understand Pip's personality through analysing his relationship with Orlick, the criminal laborer who works at Joe Gargery's forge, than by looking at his relationship with Magwitch.


title: Great Expectations

text: Following Moynahan, David Trotter notes that Orlick is Pip's shadow. Co-workers in the forge, both find themselves at Miss Havisham's, where Pip enters and joins the company, while Orlick, attending the door, stays out. Pip considers Biddy a sister; Orlick has other plans for her; Pip is connected to Magwitch, Orlick to Magwitch's nemesis, Compeyson. Orlick also aspires to "great expectations" and resents Pip's ascension from the forge and the swamp to the glamour of Satis House, from which Orlick is excluded, along with London's dazzling society. Orlick is the cumbersome shadow Pip cannot remove.


title: Great Expectations

text: Then comes Pip's punishment, with Orlick's savage attack on Mrs Gargery. Thereafter Orlick vanishes, only to reappear in chapter 53 in a symbolic act, when he lures Pip into a locked, abandoned building in the marshes. Orlick has a score to settle before going on to the ultimate act, murder. However, Pip hampers Orlick, because of his privileged status, while Orlick remains a slave of his condition, solely responsible for Mrs Gargery's fate.


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens also uses Pip's upper class counterpart, Bentley Drummle, "the double of a double", according to Trotter, in a similar way. Like Orlick, Drummle is powerful, swarthy, unintelligible, hot-blooded, and lounges and lurks, biding his time. Estella rejects Pip for this rude, uncouth but well-born man, and ends Pip's hope. Finally the lives of both Orlick and Drummle end violently.


title: Great Expectations

text: Although the novel is written in first person, the reader knows—as an essential prerequisite—that "Great Expectations" is not an autobiography but a novel, a work of fiction with plot and characters, featuring a narrator-protagonist. In addition, Sylvère Monod notes that the treatment of the autobiography differs from "David Copperfield", as "Great Expectations" does not draw from events in Dickens's life; "at most some traces of a broad psychological and moral introspection can be found".


title: Great Expectations

text: However, according to Paul Pickerel's analysis, Pip—as both narrator and protagonist—recounts with hindsight the story of the young boy he was, who did not know the world beyond a narrow geographic and familial environment. The novel's direction emerges from the confrontation between the two periods of time. At first, the novel presents a mistreated orphan, repeating situations from "Oliver Twist" and "David Copperfield", but the trope is quickly overtaken. The theme manifests itself when Pip discovers the existence of a world beyond the marsh, the forge and the future Joe envisioned for him, the decisive moment when Miss Havisham and Estella enter his life. This is a red herring, as the decay of Satis House and the strange lady within signals the fragility of an impasse. At this point, the reader knows more than the protagonist, creating dramatic irony that confers a superiority that the narrator shares.


title: Great Expectations

text: It is not until Magwitch's return, a plot twist that unites loosely connected plot elements and sets them into motion, that the protagonist's point of view joins those of the narrator and the reader. In this context of progressive revelation, the sensational events at the novel's end serve to test the protagonist's point of view. Thus proceeds, in the words of A. E. Dyson, "The Immolations of Pip".


title: Great Expectations

text: Some of the narrative devices that Dickens uses are caricature, comic speech mannerisms, intrigue, Gothic atmosphere, and a central character who gradually changes. Earl Davis notes the close network of the structure and balance of contrasts, and praises the first-person narration for providing a simplicity that is appropriate for the story while avoiding melodrama. Davis sees the symbolism attached to "great expectations" as reinforcing the novel's impact.


title: Great Expectations

text: Characters then become themes in themselves, almost a Wagnerian "leitmotiv", whose attitudes are repeated at each of their appearances as a musical phrase signaling their entry. For example, Jaggers constantly chews the same fingernail and rubs his hands with perfumed lotion, Orlick lurches his huge body, and Matthew Pocket always pulls at his hair. Seen by the narrator, their attitude is mechanical, like that of an automaton: in the general scheme, the gesture betrays the uneasiness of the unaccomplished or exasperated man, his betrayed hope, his unsatisfied life. In this set, every character is orbited by "satellite" characters. Wemmick is Jaggers's copy at work, but has placed in Walworth a secret garden, a castle with a family of a senile father and an old, archetypally prudish housekeeper where he happily devours buttered bread. Wopsle plays the role of a poor Pip, kind of unsuccessful, but with his distraction, finally plays "Hamlet" in London, and Pumblechook does not hesitate to be the instrument of Pip's fortunes, then the mentor of his resurrection.


title: Great Expectations

text: For Pip's redemption to be credible, Trotter writes, the words of the main character must sound right. Christopher Ricks adds that Pip's frankness induces empathy, dramatics are avoided, and his good actions are more eloquent than words. Dickens's subtle narrative technique is also shown when he has Pip confess that he arranged Herbert's partnership with Clarriker, has Miss Havisham finally see the true character of her cousin Matthew Pocket, and has Pocket refuse the money she offers him. To this end, the narrative method subtly changes until, during the perilous journey down the Thames to remove Magwitch in chapter 54, the narrative point-of-view shifts from first person to the omniscient point of view. For the first time, Ricks writes, the "I" ceases to be Pip's thoughts and switches to the other characters, the focus, at once, turns outward, and this is mirrored in the imagery of the black waters tormented waves and eddies, which heaves with an anguish that encompasses the entire universe, the passengers, the docks, the river, the night.


title: Great Expectations

text: According to Paul Davis, while more realistic than its autobiographical predecessor written when novels like George Eliot's "Adam Bede" were in vogue, "Great Expectations" is in many ways a poetic work built around recurring symbolic images: the desolation of the marshes; the twilight; the chains of the house, the past, the painful memory; the fire; the hands that manipulate and control; the distant stars of desire; the river connecting past, present and future.


title: Great Expectations

text: "Great Expectations" contains a variety of literary genres, including the bildungsroman, gothic novel, crime novel, as well as comedy, melodrama and satire; and it belongs—like "Wuthering Heights" and the novels of Walter Scott—to the romance rather than realist tradition of the novel.


title: Great Expectations

text: Complex and multifaceted, "Great Expectations" is a Victorian "bildungsroman", or initiatory tale, which focuses on a protagonist who matures over the course of the novel. "Great Expectations" describes Pip's initial frustration upon leaving home, followed by a long and difficult period that is punctuated with conflicts between his desires and the values of established order. During this time he re-evaluates his life and re-enters society on new foundations.


title: Great Expectations

text: However, the novel differs from the two preceding pseudo-autobiographies, "David Copperfield" and "Bleak House" (1852), (though the latter is only partially narrated in first-person), in that it also partakes of several sub-genres popular in Dickens's time.


title: Great Expectations

text: "Great Expectations" contains many comic scenes and eccentric personalities, integral parts to both the plot and the theme. Among the notable comic episodes are Pip's Christmas dinner in chapter 4, Wopsle's "Hamlet" performance in chapter 31, and Wemmick's marriage in chapter 55. Many of the characters have eccentricities: Jaggers with his punctilious lawyerly ways; the contrariness of his clerk, Wemmick, at work advising Pip to invest in "portable property", while in private living in a cottage converted into a castle; and the reclusive Miss Havisham in her decaying mansion, wearing her tattered bridal robes.


title: Great Expectations

text: "Great Expectations" incorporates elements of the new genre of crime fiction, which Dickens had already used in "Oliver Twist" (1837), and which was being developed by his friends Wilkie Collins and William Harrison Ainsworth. With its scenes of convicts, prison ships, and episodes of bloody violence, Dickens creates characters worthy of the Newgate school of fiction.


title: Great Expectations

text: "Great Expectations" contains elements of the Gothic genre, especially Miss Havisham, the bride frozen in time, and the ruined Satis House filled with weeds and spiders. Other characters linked to this genre include the aristocratic Bentley Drummle, because of his extreme cruelty; Pip himself, who spends his youth chasing a frozen beauty; the monstrous Orlick, who systematically attempts to murder his employers. Then there is the fight to the death between Compeyson and Magwitch, and the fire that ends up killing Miss Havisham, scenes dominated by horror, suspense, and the sensational.


title: Great Expectations

text: Elements of the silver-fork novel are found in the character of Miss Havisham and her world, as well as Pip's illusions. This genre, which flourished in the 1820s and 1830s, presents the flashy elegance and aesthetic frivolities found in high society. In some respects, Dickens conceived "Great Expectations" as an anti silver fork novel, attacking Charles Lever's novel "A Day's Ride", publication of which began January 1860, in "Household Words". This can be seen in the way that Dickens satirises the pretensions and morals of Miss Havisham and her sycophants, including the Pockets (except Matthew), and Uncle Pumblechook.


title: Great Expectations

text: Though "Great Expectations" is not obviously a historical novel, Dickens does emphasise differences between the time that the novel is set (c. 1812–46) and when it was written (1860–1).


title: Great Expectations

text: "Great Expectations" begins around 1812 (the year of Dickens's birth), continues until around 1830–1835, and then jumps to around 1840–1845, during which the Great Western Railway was built. Though readers today will not notice this, Dickens uses various things to emphasise the differences between 1861 and this earlier period. Among these details—that contemporary readers would have recognised—are the one pound note (in chapter 10) that the Bank Notes Act 1826 had removed from circulation; likewise, the death penalty for deported felons who returned to Britain was abolished in 1835. The gallows erected in the swamps, designed to display a rotting corpse, had disappeared by 1832, and George III, the monarch mentioned at the beginning, died in 1820, when Pip would have been seven or eight. Miss Havisham paid Joe 25 guineas, gold coins, when Pip was to begin his apprenticeship (in chapter 13); guinea coins were slowly going out of circulation after the last new ones were struck with the face of George III in 1799. This also marks the historical period, as the one pound note was the official currency at the time of the novel's publication. Dickens placed the epilogue 11 years after Magwitch's death, which seems to be the time limit of the reported facts. Collectively, the details suggest that Dickens identified with the main character. If Pip is around 23 toward the middle of the novel and 34 at its end, he is roughly modeled after his creator who turned 34 in 1846.


title: Great Expectations

text: The title's "Expectations" refers to "a legacy to come", and thus immediately announces that money, or more specifically wealth plays an important part in the novel. Some other major themes are crime, social class, including both gentility, and social alienation, imperialism and ambition. The novel is also concerned with questions relating to conscience and moral regeneration, as well as redemption through love.


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens famously created comic and telling names for his characters, but in "Great Expectations" he goes further. The first sentence of the novel establishes that Pip's proper name is Philip Pirrip – the wording of his father's gravestone – which "my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip". The name Philip Pirrip (or Pirrip) is never again used in the novel. In Chapter 18, when he receives his expectation from an anonymous benefactor, the first condition attached to it is "that you always bear the name of Pip".


title: Great Expectations

text: In Chapter 22, when Pip establishes his friendship with Herbert Pocket, he attempts to introduce himself as Philip. Herbert immediately rejects the name: "'I don't take to Philip,' said he, smiling, 'for it sounds like a moral boy out of the spelling-book'" and decides to refer to Pip exclusively as Handel: "'Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There's a charming piece of music by Handel, called the "Harmonious Blacksmith"<nowiki>'</nowiki>". The only other place he is referred to as Philip is in Chapter 44, when he receives a letter addressed to "Philip Pip" from his friend Wemmick, which says "DON'T GO HOME".


title: Great Expectations

text: A central theme here is of people living as social outcasts. The novel's opening setting emphasises this: the orphaned Pip lives in an isolated foggy environment next to a graveyard, dangerous swamps, and prison ships. Furthermore, "I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion and morality".


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip feels excluded by society and this leads to his aggressive attitude towards it, as he tries to win his place within it through any means. Various other characters behave similarly—that is, the oppressed become the oppressors. Jaggers dominates Wemmick, who in turn dominates Jaggers's clients. Likewise, Magwitch uses Pip as an instrument of vengeance, as Miss Havisham uses Estella.


title: Great Expectations

text: However, Pip has hope despite his sense of exclusion because he is convinced that divine providence owes him a place in society and that marriage to Estella is his destiny. Therefore, when fortune comes his way, Pip shows no surprise, because he believes that his value as a human being and his inherent nobility have been recognized. Thus, Pip accepts Pumblechook's flattery without blinking: "That boy is no common boy" and the "May I? "May" I?" associated with handshakes.


title: Great Expectations

text: From Pip's hope comes his "uncontrollable, impossible love for Estella", despite the humiliations to which she has subjected him. For Pip, winning a place in society also means winning Estella's heart.


title: Great Expectations

text: When the money secretly provided by Magwitch enables Pip to enter London society, two new related themes, wealth and gentility, are introduced.


title: Great Expectations

text: As the novel's title implies money is a theme of "Great Expectations". Central to this is the idea that wealth is only acceptable to the ruling class if it comes from the labour of others. Miss Havisham's wealth comes not from the sweat of her brow but from rent collected on properties she inherited from her father, a brewer. Her wealth is "pure", and her father's profession as a brewer does not contaminate it. Herbert states in chapter 22 that "while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew." Because of her wealth, the old lady, despite her eccentricity, enjoys public esteem. She remains in a constant business relationship with her lawyer Jaggers and keeps a tight grip over her "court" of sycophants, so that, far from representing social exclusion, she is the very image of a powerful landed aristocracy that is frozen in the past and "embalmed in its own pride".


title: Great Expectations

text: On the other hand, Magwitch's wealth is socially unacceptable, firstly because he earned it, not through the efforts of others, but through his own hard work, and secondly because he was a convict, and he earned it in a penal colony. It is argued that the contrast with Miss Havisham's wealth is suggested symbolically. Thus Magwitch's money smells of sweat, and his money is greasy and crumpled: "two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle market in the country", while the coins Miss Havisham gives for Pip's "indentures" shine as if new. Further, it is argued Pip demonstrates his "good breeding", because when he discovers that he owes his transformation into a "gentleman" to such a contaminated windfall, he is repulsed. A. O. J. Cockshut, however, has suggested that there is no difference between Magwitch's wealth and that of Miss Havisham's.


title: Great Expectations

text: Trotter emphasizes the importance of Magwitch's greasy banknotes. Beyond Pip's emotional reaction the notes reveal that Dickens's views on social and economic progress have changed in the years prior to the publication of "Great Expectations". His novels and "Household Words" extensively reflect Dickens's views, and his efforts to contribute to social progress expanded in the 1840s. To illustrate his point, he cites Humphry House who, succinctly, writes that in "Pickwick Papers", "a bad smell was a bad smell", whereas in "Our Mutual Friend" and "Great Expectations", "it is a problem".


title: Great Expectations

text: At the time of The Great Exhibition of 1851, Dickens and Richard Henry Horne, an editor of "Household Words", wrote an article comparing the British technology that created the Crystal Palace to the few artifacts exhibited by China: England represented an openness to worldwide trade and China isolationism. "To compare China and England is to compare Stoppage to Progress", they concluded. According to Trotter, this was a way to target the Tory government's return to protectionism, which they felt would make England the China of Europe. In fact, "Household Words"' 17 May 1856 issue, championed international free trade, comparing the constant flow of money to the circulation of the blood. In the 1850s, Dickens believed in "genuine" wealth, which critic Trotter compares to fresh banknotes, crisp to the touch, pure and odorless.


title: Great Expectations

text: With "Great Expectations", Dickens's views about wealth have changed. However, though some sharp satire exists, no character in the novel has the role of the moralist that condemn Pip and his society. In fact, even Joe and Biddy themselves, paragons of good sense, are complicit, through their exaggerated innate humility, in Pip's social deviancy. Dickens's moral judgement is first made through the way that he contrasts characters: only a few characters keep to the straight and narrow path; Joe, whose values remain unchanged; Matthew Pocket whose pride renders him, to his family's astonishment, unable to flatter his rich relatives; Jaggers, who keeps a cool head and has no illusions about his clients; Biddy, who overcomes her shyness to, from time to time, bring order. The narrator-hero is left to draw the necessary conclusions: in the end, Pip finds the light and embarks on a path of moral regeneration.


title: Great Expectations

text: In London, neither wealth nor gentility brings happiness. Pip, the apprentice gentleman constantly bemoans his anxiety, his feelings of insecurity, and multiple allusions to overwhelming chronic unease, to weariness, drown his enthusiasm (chapter 34). Wealth, in effect, eludes his control: the more he spends, the deeper he goes into debt to satisfy new needs, which were just as futile as his old ones. His unusual path to gentility has the opposite effect to what he expected: infinite opportunities become available, certainly, but will power, in proportion, fades and paralyses the soul. In the crowded metropolis, Pip grows disenchanted, disillusioned, and lonely. Alienated from his native Kent, he has lost the support provided by the village blacksmith. In London, he is powerless to join a community, not the Pocket family, much less Jaggers's circle. London has become Pip's prison and, like the convicts of his youth, he is bound in chains: "no Satis House can be built merely with money".


title: Great Expectations

text: The idea of "good breeding" and what makes for a "gentleman" other than money, in other words, "gentility", is a central theme of "Great Expectations". The convict Magwitch covets it by proxy through Pip; Mrs Pocket dreams of acquiring it; it is also found in Pumblechook's sycophancy; it is even seen in Joe, when he stammers between "Pip" and "Sir" during his visit to London, and when Biddy's letters to Pip suddenly become reverent.


title: Great Expectations

text: There are other characters who are associated with the idea of gentility like, for example, Miss Havisham's seducer, Compeyson, the scarred-face convict. While Compeyson is corrupt, even Magwitch does not forget he is a gentleman. This also includes Estella, who ignores the fact that she is the daughter of Magwitch and another criminal.


title: Great Expectations

text: There are a couple of ways by which someone can acquire gentility, one being a title, another family ties to the upper middle class. Mrs Pocket bases every aspiration on the fact that her grandfather failed to be knighted, while Pip hopes that Miss Havisham will eventually adopt him, as adoption, as evidenced by Estella, who behaves like a born and bred little lady, is acceptable. But even more important, though not sufficient, are wealth and education. Pip knows that and endorses it, as he hears from Jaggers through Matthew Pocket: "I was not designed for any profession, and I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could hold my own with the average of young men in prosperous circumstances". But neither the educated Matthew Pocket, nor Jaggers, who has earned his status solely through his intellect, can aspire to gentility. Bentley Drummle, however, embodies the social ideal, so that Estella marries him without hesitation.


title: Great Expectations

text: In chapter 39, the novel's turning point, Magwitch visits Pip to see the gentleman he has made, and once the convict has hidden in Herbert Pocket's room, Pip realises his situation:


title: Great Expectations

text: To cope with his situation and his learning that he now needs Magwitch, a hunted, injured man who traded his life for Pip's. Pip can only rely on the power of love for Estella Pip now goes through a number of different stages each of which, is accompanied by successive realisations about the vanity of the prior certainties.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip's problem is more psychological and moral than social. Pip's climbing of the social ladder upon gaining wealth is followed by a corresponding degradation of his integrity. Thus after his first visit in Miss Havisham, the innocent young boy from the marshes, suddenly turns into a liar to dazzle his sister, Mrs Joe, and his Uncle Pumblechook with the tales of a carriage and veal chops. More disturbing is his fascination with Satis House – where he is despised and even slapped, beset by ghostly visions, rejected by the Pockets – and the gradual growth of the mirage of London. The allure of wealth overpowers loyalty and gratitude, even conscience itself. This is evidenced by the urge to buy Joe's return, in chapter 27, Pip's haughty glance as Joe deciphers the alphabet, not to mention the condescending contempt he confesses to Biddy, copying Estella's behaviour toward him.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip represents, as do those he mimics, the bankruptcy of the "idea of the gentleman", and becomes the sole beneficiary of vulgarity, inversely proportional to his mounting gentility. In chapter 30, Dickens parodies the new disease that is corroding Pip's moral values through the character "Trabb's boy", who is the only one not to be fooled. The boy parades through the main street of the village with boyish antics and contortions meant to satirically imitate Pip. The gross, comic caricature openly exposes the hypocrisy of this "new" gentleman in a frock coat and top hat. Trabb's boy reveals that appearance has taken precedence over being, protocol on feelings, decorum on authenticity; labels reign to the point of absurdity, and human solidarity is no longer the order of the day.


title: Great Expectations

text: Estella and Miss Havisham represent rich people who enjoy a materially easier life but cannot cope with a tougher reality. Miss Havisham, like a melodramatic heroine, withdrew from life at the first sign of hardship. Estella, excessively spoiled and pampered, sorely lacks judgement and falls prey to the first gentleman who approaches her, though he is the worst. Estella's marriage to such a brute demonstrates the failure of her education. Estella is used to dominating but becomes a victim to her own vice, brought to her level by a man born, in her image.


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens uses imagery to reinforce his ideas and London, the paradise of the rich and of the "ideal" of the gentleman, has mounds of filth, it is crooked, decrepit, and greasy, a dark desert of bricks, soot, rain, and fog. The surviving vegetation is stunted, and confined to fenced-off paths, without air or light. Barnard's Inn, where Pip lodges, offers mediocre food and service while the rooms, despite the furnishing provided, as Suhamy states, "for the money", is most uncomfortable, a far cry from Joe's large kitchen, radiating hearth, and his well-stocked pantry.


title: Great Expectations

text: Likewise, such a world, dominated by the lure of money and social prejudice, also leads to the warping of people and morals, to family discord and war between man and woman. In contrast to London's corruption stands Joe, despite his intellectual and social limitations, in whom the values of the heart prevail and who has natural wisdom.


title: Great Expectations

text: Another important theme is Pip's sense of guilt, which he has felt from an early age. After the encounter with the convict Magwitch, Pip is afraid that someone will find out about his crime and arrest him. The theme of guilt comes into even greater effect when Pip discovers that his benefactor is a convict. Pip has an internal struggle with his conscience throughout "Great Expectations", hence the long and painful process of redemption that he undergoes.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip's moral regeneration is a true pilgrimage punctuated by suffering. Like Christian in Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress", Pip makes his way up to light through a maze of horrors that afflict his body as well as his mind. This includes the burns he suffers from saving Miss Havisham from the fire; the illness that requires months of recovery; the threat of a violent death at Orlick's hands; debt, and worse, the obligation of having to repay them; hard work, which he recognises as the only worthy source of income, hence his return to Joe's forge. Even more important, is his accepting of Magwitch, a coarse outcast of society.


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens makes use of symbolism, in chapter 53, to emphasise Pip's moral regeneration. As he prepares to go down the Thames to rescue the convict, a veil lifted from the river and Pip's spirit. Symbolically the fog which enveloped the marshes as Pip left for London has finally lifted, and he feels ready to become a man.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip is redeemed by love, that, for Dickens as for generations of Christian moralists, is only acquired through sacrifice. Pip's reluctance completely disappears and he embraces Magwitch. After this, Pip's loyalty remains foolproof, during imprisonment, trial, and death of the convict. He grows selfless and his "expectations" are confiscated by the Crown. Moments before Magwitch's death, Pip reveals that Estella, Magwitch's daughter, is alive, "a lady and very beautiful. And I love her". Here the greatest sacrifice: the recognition that he owes everything, even Estella, to Magwitch; his new debt becomes his greatest freedom.


title: Great Expectations

text: Pip returns to the forge, his previous state and to meaningful work. The philosophy expressed here by Dickens that of a person happy with their contribution to the welfare of society, is in line with Thomas Carlyle's theories and his condemnation, in "Latter-Day Pamphlets" (1850), the system of social classes flourishing in idleness, much like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did. Dickens's hero is neither an aristocrat nor a capitalist but a working-class boy.


title: Great Expectations

text: In "Great Expectations", the true values are childhood, youth, and heart. The heroes of the story are the young Pip, a true visionary, and still developing person, open, sensible, who is persecuted by soulless adults. Then the adolescent Pip and Herbert, imperfect but free, intact, playful, endowed with fantasy in a boring and frivolous world. Magwitch is also a positive figure, a man of heart, victim of false appearances and of social images, formidable and humble, bestial but pure, a vagabond of God, despised by men. There is also Pip's affectional friend Joe, the enemy of the lie. Finally, there are women like Biddy.


title: Great Expectations

text: Edward W. Said, in his 1993 work "Culture and Imperialism", interprets "Great Expectations" in terms of postcolonial theory about late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British imperialism. Pip's disillusionment when he learns his benefactor is an escaped convict from Australia, along with his acceptance of Magwitch as surrogate father, is described by Said as part of "the imperial process", that is the way colonialism exploits the weaker members of a society. Thus the British trading post in Cairo legitimatises Pip's work as a clerk, but the money earned by Magwitch's honest labour is illegitimate, because Australia is a penal colony, and Magwitch is forbidden to return to Britain. Said states that Dickens has Magwitch return to be redeemed by Pip's love, paving the way for Pip's own redemption, but despite this moral message, the book still reinforces standards that support the authority of the British Empire. Said's interpretation suggests that Dickens's attitude backs Britain's exploitation of Middle East "through trade and travel", and that "Great Expectations" affirms the idea of keeping the Empire and its peoples in their place—at the exploitable margins of British society.


title: Great Expectations

text: However, the novel's Gothic, and Romance genre elements, challenge Said's assumption that "Great Expectations" is a realist novel like Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe".


title: Great Expectations

text: Dickens's novel has influenced a number of writers. Sue Roe's "Estella: Her Expectations" (1982), for example, explores the inner life of an Estella fascinated with a Havisham figure. Miss Havisham is again important in "Havisham: A Novel" (2013), a book by Ronald Frame, that features an imagining of the life of Miss Catherine Havisham from childhood to adulthood. The second chapter of Rosalind Ashe's "Literary Houses" (1982) paraphrases Miss Havisham's story, with details about the nature and structure of Satis House and coloured imaginings of the house within. Miss Havisham is also central to "Lost in a Good Book" (2002), Jasper Fforde's alternate history fantasy novel, which features a parody of Miss Havisham. It won the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association 2004 Dilys Award.


title: Great Expectations

text: Magwitch is the protagonist of Peter Carey's "Jack Maggs" (1997), which is a re-imagining of Magwitch's return to England, with the addition, among other things, of a fictionalised Dickens character and plot-line. Carey's novel won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1998. "Mister Pip" (2006), a novel by New Zealand author Lloyd Jones, won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. "Mister Pip" is set in a village on the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville during a brutal civil war there in the 1990s, where the young protagonist's life is impacted in a major way by her reading of "Great Expectations".


title: Great Expectations

text: In May 2015, Udon Entertainment's Manga Classics line published a manga adaptation of "Great Expectations".


title: Great Expectations

text: Like many other Dickens novels, "Great Expectations" has been filmed for the cinema or television and adapted for the stage numerous times. The film adaptation in 1946 gained the greatest acclaim. The story is often staged, and less often produced as a musical. The 1939 stage play and the 1946 film that followed from that stage production did not include the character Orlick and ends the story when the characters are still young adults. That character has been excluded in many televised adaptations made since the 1946 movie by David Lean. Following are highlights of the adaptations for film and television, and for the stage, since the early 20th century.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: USS "Gerald R. Ford" (CVN-78) is the lead ship of her class of United States Navy aircraft carriers. The ship is named after the 38th President of the United States, Gerald Ford, whose World War II naval service included combat duty aboard the light aircraft carrier in the Pacific Theater.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: Construction began on 11 August 2005, when Northrop Grumman held a ceremonial steel cut for a 15-ton plate that forms part of a side shell unit of the carrier. The keel of "Gerald R. Ford" was laid down on 13 November 2009. She was christened on 9 November 2013. "Gerald R. Ford" entered the fleet replacing the decommissioned , which ended her 51 years of active service in December 2012. Originally scheduled for delivery in 2015, "Gerald R. Ford" was delivered to the Navy on 31 May 2017 and formally commissioned by President Donald Trump on 22 July 2017. The Navy announced that the carrier will sail on her first deployment sometime during 2022. , she is the world's largest aircraft carrier, and the largest warship ever constructed in terms of displacement.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: In 2006, while Gerald Ford was still alive, Senator John Warner of Virginia proposed to amend a 2007 defense-spending bill to declare that CVN-78 "shall be named the USS "Gerald Ford"." The final version, signed by President George W. Bush on 17 October 2006, declared only that it "is the sense of Congress that ... CVN-78 should be named the U.S.S. "Gerald R. Ford"." Since such "sense of" language is typically non-binding and does not carry the force of law, the Navy was not required to name the ship after Ford.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 3 January 2007, former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that the aircraft carrier would be named after Ford during a eulogy for President Ford at Grace Episcopal Church in East Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rumsfeld indicated that he had personally told Ford of the honor during a visit to his home in Rancho Mirage a few weeks before Ford's death. This makes the aircraft carrier one of the few U.S. ships named after a living person. Later in the day, the Navy confirmed that the aircraft carrier would indeed be named after the former president. On 16 January 2007, Navy Secretary Donald Winter officially named CVN-78 USS "Gerald R. Ford". Ford's daughter Susan Ford Bales was named the ship's sponsor. The announcements were made at a Pentagon ceremony attended by Vice President Dick Cheney, Senators Warner (R-VA) and Levin (D-MI), Major General Guy C. Swan III, Bales, Ford's other three children, and others.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: The USS "America" Carrier Veterans Association (CVA) had pushed to name the ship USS "America". The CVA is an association of sailors who served aboard . The carrier was decommissioned in 1996 and scuttled in 2005 in the Atlantic, as part of a damage test of large deck aircraft carriers. The name ""America"" was instead assigned to , an amphibious assault ship commissioned in 2014.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 10 September 2008, the U.S. Navy signed a $5.1 billion contract with Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia, to design and construct the carrier. Northrop had begun advance construction of the carrier under a $2.7 billion contract in 2005. The carrier was constructed at the Huntington Ingalls (formerly Northrop Grumman) Newport News Shipbuilding facilities in Newport News, Virginia, which employs 19,000 workers.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: The keel of the new warship was ceremonially laid on 14 November 2009 in Dry Dock 12 by Ford's daughter, Susan Ford Bales. In a speech to the assembled shipworkers and DoD officials, Bales said: "Dad met the staggering challenges of restoring trust in the presidency and healing the nation's wounds after Watergate in the only way he knew how—with complete honesty and integrity. And that is the legacy we remember this morning."


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: The ship's crest was developed jointly by the ship sponsor and the first commanding officer, Captain John F. Meier.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: In August 2011, the carrier was reported to be "structurally halfway complete". In April 2012, construction was said to be 75 percent complete. On 24 May 2012, the important milestone of completing the vessel up to the waterline was reached when the critical lower bow was lifted into place. This was the 390th of the nearly 500 lifts of the integral modular components from which the vessel is assembled. Huntington Ingalls reported in an 8 November press release construction had "reached 87 percent structural completion". By 19 December 2012, construction had reached 90 percent structural completion. "Of the nearly 500 total structural lifts needed to complete the ship, 446 have been accomplished."


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 7 May 2013, the last of 162 superlifts was put in place, bringing the ship to 100 percent structural completion.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 11 July 2013, a time capsule was welded into a small room just above the floor, continuing a long Navy tradition. The time capsule holds items chosen by President Ford's daughter, Susan Ford Bales, and includes sandstone from the White House, Navy coins, and aviator wings from the ship's first commanding officer.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: The ship was originally scheduled for launch in July 2013 and delivery in 2015. Production delays meant that the launch had to be delayed until 11 October 2013 and the naming ceremony until 9 November 2013, with delivery in February 2016.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 3 October 2013, "Gerald R. Ford" had four 30-ton, -diameter bronze propellers installed. The installation of the propellers required more than 10 months of work to install the underwater shafting.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 11 October 2013, the ship's drydock was flooded for the first time in order to test various seawater-based systems. Her launch date was set to be on the same day as her naming ceremony on 9 November 2013.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 9 November 2013, the ship was christened by Ford's daughter, Susan Ford Bales, with a bottle of American sparkling wine.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: As of 2013, construction costs were estimated at $12.8 billion, 22% over the 2008 budget, plus $4.7 billion in research and development costs. Because of budget difficulties, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, warned there might be a two-year delay beyond 2016 in completing "Gerald R. Ford". The GAO reported that the price cap would be met by the Navy accepting an incomplete ship for that cost.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 23 September 2015, the Navy announced that several weeks of testing delays would likely slip the delivery date into April or May 2016. In addition, construction was 93% complete as of September 2015.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: In July 2016, a memo was obtained by CNN from Michael Gilmore, the US Department of Defense's Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation indicating that problems with four major flight systems would further delay combat readiness of the ship. The ship was not expected to be delivered until November 2016 and these issues were suggested to further delay that goal. Construction of the ship was described as 98% complete, with 88% of testing finished.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: By March 2018, due to issues with the nuclear propulsion system and munitions elevators, construction costs had reached $13.027 billion, making the "Gerald R. Ford" the most expensive warship ever built. Planned delivery to the Navy was delayed by three months, to October 2019.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: "Gerald R. Ford" is intended to be the first of a class of aircraft carriers that offer significant performance improvements over the previous . "Gerald R. Ford" is equipped with an AN/SPY-3 and AN/SPY-4 active electronically scanned array multi-function, multi-band radar, and an island that is shorter in length and taller than that of the "Nimitz" class; it is set farther aft and closer to the edge of the ship. Replacing traditional steam catapults, the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) will launch all non-VTOL carrier aircraft. This innovation eliminates the traditional requirement to generate and store steam, freeing up considerable area below-deck. With the EMALS, "Gerald R. Ford" can accomplish 25% more aircraft launches per day than the "Nimitz" class and requires 25% fewer crew members. The Navy estimates it will save $4 billion in operating costs over a 50-year lifespan. According to an Associated Press story:


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: These performance enhancements were problematic in Pentagon tests, but final software fixes for some of the problems were delayed until after the ship's post-shakedown availability in 2019.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: In January 2014, the annual Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) report recorded that critical ship systems in lab and test environments (including the EMALS, Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), Dual Band Radar, and weapons elevators) were not reliable enough and needed more testing and improvements. The Navy implemented a rigorous testing program to ensure performance issues would be resolved before the systems were installed on the aircraft carrier. Major problems with the main turbine generators were found in June 2016. The fix, requiring design changes, was installed and was verified during acceptance trials in May 2017. The Initial Operational Test & Evaluation milestone was achieved in April 2017. On 8 April 2017, "Gerald R. Ford" got underway under her own power for the first time as she headed to sea for builder's trials. She completed the trials and returned to port at Naval Station Norfolk on 14 April 2017. On 24 May 2017, she departed for acceptance trials and completed them on 26 May 2017.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: In 2018, the Navy requested to delay shock trials for at least six years in order to speed up the ship's deployment, but this request was denied. On 18 June 2021, "Gerald R. Ford" completed her first Full Ship Shock Trial off Ponce Inlet, Florida to ensure that she is able to withstand battle conditions. 40,000 lbs. (18 tonnes) of TNT was detonated underwater, measured as a 3.9 magnitude earthquake by USGS. Additional tests were conducted in July and August, with the test detonations set off closer to the hull. The ship was determined to have passed the tests and this concluded the trials.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 31 May 2017, Newport News Shipbuilding delivered "Gerald R. Ford" to the U.S. Navy and her status was changed to "Special, in service". "Gerald R. Ford" was formally commissioned into the United States Navy on 22 July 2017.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 28 July 2017, Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 (VX-23) performed the first arrested landing and catapult launch from "Gerald R. Ford" in an F/A-18F Super Hornet.


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: According to a GAO report in mid-2020 the "Gerald R. Ford" was still reporting significant problems with the operation of her weapons elevators, while a DoD report in early 2021 stated that the ship was still not combat-ready, citing continuing problems with the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS). Designed to achieve 4,166 aircraft launches between operational mission failures, instead it went 181 launches between failures, "well below the requirement".


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: On 20 March 2021, "Gerald R. Ford" and conducted Ready for Operations (RFO) by the Italian Navy while transiting the Atlantic Ocean. In September 2022, Rear Adm. James Downey described the ship as "fully delivered" and has "met her initial operating capability".


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: "Gerald R. Ford" left Naval Station Norfolk for her maiden deployment on 4 October 2022. The carrier was to conduct operations and training exercises alongside NATO allies and partners throughout the Atlantic Ocean. "Gerald R. Ford"s Carrier Strike Group 12 included Carrier Air Wing 8, , Destroyer Squadron 2 with , and , auxiliaries and , and the United States Coast Guard cutter . Among the first NATO ships assigned to CSG-12 was the .


title: USS Gerald R. Ford

text: "Gerald R. Ford"s first port visit outside of her home country was on 28 October 2022, to Halifax Harbour in Nova Scotia, home of CFB Halifax, Canada's largest military installation and home port of the Royal Canadian Navy's Atlantic fleet. On 14 November 2022 the ship arrived in United Kingdom waters, for a four day visit anchored in Stokes Bay near Gosport.


title: Greenland shark

text: The Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus), also known as the gurry shark, grey shark, or by the Kalaallisut name eqalussuaq, is a large shark of the family Somniosidae ("sleeper sharks"), closely related to the Pacific and southern sleeper sharks. The distribution of this species is mostly restricted to the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean; however, more recent evidence indicates that at great depths it may range as far south as the Caribbean.


title: Greenland shark

text: The Greenland shark has the longest known lifespan of all vertebrate species (estimated to be between 250 and 500 years), and is among the largest extant species of shark. It is a generalist feeder, consuming a variety of available foods. As an adaptation to living at depth, it has a high concentration of trimethylamine "N"-oxide in its tissues, which causes the meat to be toxic. Greenland shark flesh, treated to reduce toxin levels, is eaten in Iceland as a delicacy known as "kæstur hákarl". As it lives in the cold depths of the Arctic and North Atlantic, isolated from human activity, it is not known to be a threat to humans, and no attacks have been recorded.


title: Greenland shark

text: The Greenland shark is one of the largest living species of shark. It usually grows between long and weighs between , but has been recorded at up to and more than . Other sources observe most Greenland sharks at around long and weighing up to .


title: Greenland shark

text: Males are typically smaller than females. It rivals the Pacific sleeper shark (possibly up to long) as the largest species in the family Somniosidae. The Greenland shark is a thickset species, with a short, rounded snout, small eyes, and very small dorsal and pectoral fins. The gill openings are very small for the species' great size.


title: Greenland shark

text: Coloration can range from pale creamy-gray to blackish-brown and the body is typically uniform in color, though whitish spots or faint dark streaks are occasionally seen on the back.


title: Greenland shark

text: When feeding on large carcasses, the shark employs a rolling motion of its jaw. The 48–52 teeth of the upper jaw are very thin and pointed, lacking serrations. These upper jaw teeth act as an anchor while the lower jaw proceeds to cut massive chunks out of the prey.


title: Greenland shark

text: The 48–52 lower teeth are interlocking and are broad and square, containing short, smooth cusps that point outward. Teeth in the two halves of the lower jaw are strongly pitched in opposite directions.


title: Greenland shark

text: The Greenland shark is an apex predator and mostly eats fish, and has been observed actively hunting seals in Canada. The prey found in the stomachs of Greenland sharks is an indicator of the active hunting patterns of these predators. Recorded fish prey have included smaller sharks, skates, eels, herring, capelin, Arctic char, cod, rosefish, sculpins, lumpfish, wolffish, and flounder. Small Greenland sharks eat predominantly squid, while the larger sharks that are greater than were discovered eating prey such as epibenthic and benthic fishes as well as seals. The largest of these sharks were found having eaten redfish, as well as other higher trophic level prey.


title: Greenland shark

text: Greenland sharks, because of their slow speeds, often hunt prey that are asleep. Using their cryptic coloration, they can approach prey undetected before closing the remaining distance by opening their large buccal cavity in order to create a suction that draws in the prey. This is the likely explanation as to why the gut contents discovered in Greenland sharks is often whole prey specimens.


title: Greenland shark

text: Greenland sharks have also been found with remains of seals, polar bears, moose, and reindeer (in one case an entire reindeer body) in their stomachs. The Greenland shark is known to be a scavenger, and is attracted by the smell of rotting meat in the water. The sharks have frequently been observed gathering around fishing boats. They also scavenge on seals.


title: Greenland shark

text: Although such a large shark could easily consume a human swimmer, the frigid waters it typically inhabits make the likelihood of attacks on people very low; no cases of predation on humans have been verified.


title: Greenland shark

text: As an ectotherm living in a just-above-freezing environment, the Greenland shark has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species, which most likely correlates with its very slow metabolism and extreme longevity. It swims at , with its fastest cruising speed only reaching . Because this top speed is only half that of a typical seal in their diet, biologists are uncertain how the sharks are able to prey on the faster seals. It is hypothesized that they may ambush them while they sleep.


title: Greenland shark

text: Greenland sharks migrate annually based on depth and temperature rather than distance, although some do travel. During the winter, the sharks congregate in the shallows (up to 80° north) for warmth but migrate separately in summer to the deeps or even farther south. The species has been observed at a depth of by a submersible investigating the wreck of the SS "Central America" that lies about east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Daily vertical migration between shallower and deeper waters has also been recorded.