“Great Expectations,” perhaps one of Charles Dickens' best-known and best-loved works, illustrates a highly skewed social class structure throughout the history. There are the poor, who have nothing but what they earn, “barely enough to survive” by working hard for most of their lives. Then there is the middle class or the “Gentlemen” who do not want but rather to have a decent income and to be supported in their desires. As in modern society, the move from a poor “working class” to a higher class is usually accompanied by the amount of wealth one has acquired. But was this concept of social class what Dickens was trying to illustrate through his life? Furthermore, what was his intention in placing this in the story? In short, what was Dickens' definition of social class? To begin, an overview of the history seems in order. Pip, the main character and protagonist of the story, grows up working class, working in a blacksmith shop with his lifelong friend Joe, an uneducated man who knows his job and that's it. One day, when he is a young boy, Pip is attacked by an escaped convict whom he decides to be kind too and who fetches him food and drink. Shortly after receiving the gift, the convict is captured and taken to prison. Some time after the incident with the escaped convict, Pip is summoned to the home of a rather wealthy woman named Miss Havisham. To call this woman despicable would be an understatement, as she is unable to let go of the grudge she holds against a former lover who left her at the altar long ago. She considers all men worthless, evil and useless and plans to use a little child named Estella, a young girl Pip meets in the middle of a paper...... likes what human qualities this them Humans desperately need to love each other. Dickens's main goal, it seems to this student, is to give his readers a sense of not losing sight of who they really are and who they really can be. The sense of power and aspiration that social class seems to present is actually, as this student finds, a trap set by a metaphorical beast that thrives on its inhabitants. Perhaps Dickens was trying to warn his fellow men of a threat that was ruining his world and to which he himself sometimes seemed to fall prey, or perhaps Dickens was simply using social class as a structure to tell the story of his life in one way or another. Regardless, “Great Expectations” certainly gives its readers a sense of foreboding when examining it from the structural perspective of society and its inhabitants..