The great American author John Irving calls Great Expectations "the novel that made me want to be a novelist-specifically, to move a reader as I was moved". Irving is merely one of the most recent admirers of this moving novel. Its orphaned hero, Pip, who undergoes change and growth, progressing from thoughtless selfishness to humble industry and generosity, is one of Dickens's best-loved characters. "It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home, " finding himself apprenticed to his blacksmith brother-in-law and "dusty with the dust of small coal. " An anonymous benefactor lifts the young man to what seems a higher station-giving him the opportunity to shun kind friends and slip into debt, but also to feel the pleasure of being a benefactor himself and ultimately to learn humility and repentance