Great Expectations is the finest novel by Charles Dickens in terms of plot, structure, style and thematic elements. Writtcn in 1861, it marks the high point of Dickens' greatness as a novelist, particularly because of his increased sensitivity to life in Victorian England and the sham and hypocrisy hc saw all around him. As a novel of social criticism, it is far more trenchant than anything Dickens wrote earlier. In the character of Pip, Dickens makes a serious attempt to present the ambivalence of the problem of good and evil. Pip is not just a young man of native goodness thrown on adversity but finally rising above it. He is a complicated mixture of good and bad—considerate and selfish, loving and callous, humble and ambitious, honest and self-deceiving. The core of Dickens' universal theme lies inside Pip himself—as it does in all of us—and the triumph of good comes through pip's self-discovery—as it will for all of us. In other memorable characters to this contradiction of the human personality is demonstrated and that is probably why Great Expectations is regarded as one of the best of Dickens's novels, its theme and characterization being universal