Lloyd Jones Great Expectations

742 Words2 Pages

“The only thing worse than being hated it being ignored, at least when they hate you they treat you like you exist” - Unknown. A common misperception nowadays is that people think being hated is the most brutal thing that can happen to someone. Being ignored or ostracized decrease a person's self-confidence and makes them want to force others to notice them. On the contrary, when someone is merely disliked or hated they are still able to stay on their path and hold on to their confidence as shown in the book Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones. Getting ignored drastically decreases one's confidence which leads them to giving up and going to desperate measures to get noticed. It can also influence them into dropping out of certain activities such as their …show more content…

Lloyd Jones clearly believes that this is true and indirectly demonstrates that throughout the entire novel by proving that when one is publicly disliked they can still continue doing what they like. The protagonist in this story is Mr. Watts. He has a drive, a drive that makes him work hard every day and stay in a village during the middle of a war. His determination allows him to overlook anything and everything negative people say to him. After war broke out all the teachers left and it was up to him, an uneducated man, to give the villages war-stricken children an education. People such as Matilda’s mom Dolores did not believe in what Mr. Watts was teaching the children. Dolores did not want her daughter to be taught by Mr. Watts, a white man, and expressed her negative views and opinions harshly without any concern for his wellbeing as seen in this quote said by the daughter of Dolores. "At the end of the story, my mum looked across to Mr. Watts, and the two of them held each other's eyes until they remembered us." This shows there is a major conflict between these two characters in which they certainly dislike each other and if the students weren't in the room the situation would have escalated. Other people in the village were also concerned. "For the younger kids, the sight consisted only of a white man towing a black woman" – The meaning

Open Document