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Over-ambition brings destruction in one’s life;

In relation to “Great Expectations” and “Vanity fair”

“The same ambition can destroy or save and make a patriot as it makes a knave” (Pop).

Here, Pop says that having ambition is good but sometimes it may bring destruction. Ambition is

the desire to achieve something or to succeed, accompanied with motivation and determination.

Ambitious people need both energy and goals to succeed. Someone with plenty of energy but no

goals may find themselves pursuing one opportunity after another without success, wondering

what it is that they are wanting out of life. On the other hand, someone with goals but no energy

may find themselves wanting to achieve success. But ambition is probably a bad thing when

someone is willing to sacrifice their personal and professional relationships in order to achieve a

goal. There are many stories about ambitious people who achieved great things in their lives but

who sacrificed their own families, friends, coworkers and business partners. Sometimes, when

you're so deeply involved, so focused with something, you forget the little things that make the

world terrific. One may lose everything because of over ambition. In Victorian period, the people

were over ambitious that we can see in the Charles Dickens’s Great Expectation and Vanity Fair.

Great Expectation is a novel where the character pip became over ambitious at one time which

lead him to lose everything of life. Becky Sharp is another character of the novel Vanity Fair

where over ambitiousness also ruins her life. These two stories show that being ambitious is

good but being over ambitious is harmful sometimes.

Firstly, a person can never be ambitious unless he is brave. Ambitious people should

achieve their goals by maintaining behavior and also should think about their present position.

But when they forget about their root and started to lose everything then they are called over
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ambitious. Over ambitious people those who want to achieve certain goals, despite the fact that

the odds of achieving those goals are almost nonexistent. Over ambition involves a significant

amount of hubris. Ambition is sometimes thought of as a form of greed, or the acceptable face of

greed, which can be defined as the excessive desire for more than is needed or deserved, not for

the greater good but for one’s own selfish interest. Greed reduces our focus to the pursuit of its

object. Christopher Marlow’s Dr. Faustus is popular play which actually represents his over

ambition and knowledge of black Magic which he uses in a bad way. Pride is also appears in the

character of Faustus. Marlowe shows his attitude towards human nature with Faustus' tragic life.

Marlowe uses the play to comment on the over ambitious nature of mankind. In the beginning of

the play, Faustus remains innocent with his scholarly knowledge and craves more power with the

abilities of dark magic but he misuse his power and he has to suffer. Marlow has shown up the

human nature of over ambition and pride and also tries to alert people not to be like Faustus who

goes in wrong way. Highly ambitious people are sensitive to resistance and failure, and

experience an almost constant dissatisfaction or frustration. I have researched on it and have

found out an event where the man named Iqbal was my neighbor and at the beginning he was

ambitious and use to give proper time to his work and family but later he became over ambitious

when he started getting promotions and started giving more importance to his work more than

his family. His wife left him with their children. So finally his over ambitious attitude lead him to

lose his family and children. So this proves that in real life being ambitious is appreciative but

being over ambitious is not acceptable.

Referring to “Great Expectations” is written by Charles Dickens and have been found an

over ambitious character. Pip is the protagonist, whose actions make up the main plot of the

novel, and the narrator, whose thoughts and attitudes shape the reader’s perception of the story.
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Pip’s character was perhaps the most important step in understanding Great Expectations. Pip

had a deep desire to improve himself and attain any possible advancement, whether educational,

moral, or social. Pip did not want to be poor, ignorant, or immoral. His desire to marry Estella

and join the upper class stems made him an ambitious person. But he became over ambitious

when Magwitch took him to Sydney, gave him a huge opportunity and helped him to be a

gentleman. When Pip became over ambitious, he immediately began to act as he thought a

gentleman is supposed to act, which lead him to treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly. After

losing Estella to the British nobleman Drummle ultimately forced him to realize that one’s social

position is not the most important quality one possesses, and that his behavior as a gentleman

had caused him to hurt the people who care about him most. Becky Sharp is another Example of

over ambition of the novel Vanity Fair written by William Makepeace Thackeray. Her character

shows that sometimes excessive greed can lead one to be an over ambitious person. Her desire

was to be a governess. At the beginning she was ambitious for that but her over ambitious nature

had found when she started to sleep with Lord Steyne in exchange for his money and social

standing. There was a time when Rawdon was in prison; instead of releasing him from there she

(Becky) was busy with Lord Steyne. Because of this nature she lost her family as Rawdon did

not wanted to be with her at one point of time in the novel. Though after all these she again

showed her greedy nature when she made Jos took out an insurance policy on his (Jos) life and

then murdered him. These are some bad things if she did them, but no definitive evidence was

ever presented, and the narrator did not tell the ultimate truth though it can be guessed that Becky

did it for her over ambitious nature. There was a time when reader got to see that because of

Becky’s over ambitious nature she became poor and needs to provide for herself and her future,
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by hook or by crook though she ended up living in Bath with a nice income, a group of loyal

friends, and a life of pious charity work.

Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectation” and William Makepeace Thackeray’s “Vanity

Fair” was written in the Victorian period. These two writers related the Victorian people’s

lifestyle with the characters of their novels .Crime and poverty these two characteristics have

found in “Great Expectation” and “Vanity Fair”. In the end of “Vanity Fair” Becky Sharp killed

her friend’s brother Jos for his money. She wanted to take all the money from Jos’s insurance

policy. Becky killed Jos because she was suffering from a very bad condition as she did not have

money at that time. Class conflict has also found as when Amelia Sedley’s family was in a better

position at that time her (Amelia) almost fiancé and his father Mr. Osborne was very happy with

her but when Amelia’s father’s started to fail at that moment Mr. Osborne wanted his son to

broke off the relation with Amelia. Class conflict has found in Becky’s characteristics where she

was dating Lord Steyne because of money though she had an honest husband who used to think

about his wife all the time. Becky dated Steyne because she was very conscious about her class

and wanted to improve her own class. In “Great Expectation” class conflict have found when

Estella teased and ignored pip for his class as he was not from upper class. This class conflict

made a desire in pip’s mind to become a gentleman. As he has the desire belonging himself in

high social class, he supposed to act like a gentlemen where the ways of behaving and thinking is

totally different from normal people. The concept of the gentleman was not merely a social or

class designation. Charles Dickens was an author of relatively humble origins who desired

passionately to be recognized as a gentleman, and insisted, in consequence, upon the essential

dignity of his occupation. Great Expectations, which contains a great deal of disguised self-

analysis, is at once a portrait or a definition of Dickens's concept of the Gentleman and a

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justification of his own claim to that title. Crime have found in Great Expectation as well. Pip

kept being forced into a kind of intimacy with crime. As a young man, travelling back to his

childhood home from London, he found himself on the same coach as two convicts. One of them

he recognized as the same ‘secret-looking man’ who accosted him. Pip saw the convict after

many years whom he helped once. So all these can relate with the Victorian period’s

characteristics which is crime, poverty and class conflict.

Over ambitiousness is represented pip’s and Becky’s character. Their pride makes them to

fall down. Becky’s intention is always on socio-economic situation and she has greed for raising

his class and treats himself that she is from upper class of the society though she is not. This

actually makes him to pride:

Perhaps, if the truth must be told, he judged of Colonel Crawley by his experience of

other husbands whom he had known in the course of the long and well-spent life, which

had made him acquainted with a great deal of the weaknesses of mankind. My lord had

bought so many men during his life that he was surely to be pardoned for supposing that

he had found the price of this one (Hendy, 281).

Here, she is comparing her ex-husband to another person and she is being judgmental. On the

hand, pip is much conscious about his class and he is also over-ambitious and is not fair with his

family. Hubris actually brings him misery in his life which is excessive pride. To represent the

social situation of Victorian period in “Great Expectation”, Charles dickens symbolizes. The

mason where Miss Havisham and Estella live is wealthy but crumbling and deteriorating

showing a direct connection to those who live in it and to the upper class society as a whole.
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Besides, pip is so much unfair with his family which finally makes him to be over-ambitious and

leads to destruction:

It is not only the memory of having stepped beyond the legal statutes in helping

Magwitch, nor only Pip's instinctive refusal to face his shameful attitude toward Joe and

Biddy; it is a whole childhood spent in something like penal servitude that bends Pip

away from his earlier com- passionate treatment of a fellow-prisoner. And one can under-

stand how he would allow his simple-minded idea of a “gentle- man “to come between

himself and Joe's (or Magwitch's) homely virtues (Hynes, 263)

Gentlemen of Victorian period had so much pride about their appearance and Pip shows the

characteristic of Victorian period in his character.

To conclude, it can be said that ambitious means want to succeed and over ambitious

means when someone’s actions come on the expense of others. Ambition is the force and desire

that drives an individual to gain power. This strong craving for authority is often seen as a

positive trait, but when ambition gets out of control it can ultimately lead to one’s ‘moral

disintegration. A person’s desire to do something could become too great and lead the person to

go through extremes to achieve what he or she wants. This could lead to a negative outcome.

Excessive ambition, when used to do evil things, is not worth the guilt that accompanies it. In

Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectation” and William Makepeace Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” are

the examples of over ambition which brings destruction for the two main characters of these

novels. Pip’s over ambitious nature did not allow him to fulfill his nature. In the same way Becky

brought herself in a poor position because of her over ambitious nature. So if someone wants to
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be an ambitious person it is really supportive and a very good choice but being over ambitious is

such a poor choice and not acceptable at all.

Work Cited:
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1. Stephanie,Vozza. "Six Habits of Ambitious People." Fast Company. Fast Company, 2015.

Web. 21 Nov. 2016.

2. Pop, Alexander. "Over Ambition Quotes." Over Ambition Quotes: Best 44 Quotes about

Over Ambition. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2016.

3. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Dhaka: Friend's Book Corner, 2008. Print.

4. Hynes, Joseph A. "Image and Symbol in Great Expectations." Jstor 30.3 (1963): 258-92.

Web. 20 Nov. 2016.

5. Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1943. Print.

6. Hendy, Andrew Von. "Misunderstandings about Becky's Characterization in Vanity Fair."

Jstor 18.3 (1963): 279-83. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.