Essay | The Role of the Reader

When in the course of reading a book, it is inevitable that one may come across an outstanding connection between the book and themselves. In one of Charles Dickens's icon novels, Great Expectations, the reader becomes as much a catalyst in advancing the plot as a simple spectator to a chain of inexorable events in the story. Characters such as Pip, Estella, Havisham, Magwitch, and Joe are the main figures of the story that have connections to the reader. These connections include subliminal messages from the author to the reader through the actions of a character, scenes with the character that are thought-provoking, and invitations for the reader to further explore the character with both imagination and tangible resources. The reader's role in the story includes the standard intentions of assessing and understanding the story as well as pondering the ideas and morals presented between the lines. Great Expectations is...
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