ABSTRACT
Exploring the concept and experience of our indebtedness to the natural world through the lens of Dickens’ masterpiece Great Expectations struck me as a bold and imaginative idea. Rosemary Randall’s reading of the novel brings out clearly a picture of Pip’s pilgrimage towards realization of his own nature and of his gradual and painful understanding of what has been given to him by others, which places him in the position of a debtor. The story provides us with a very striking and moving representation of a shift from a narcissistic state of mind towards one imbued with the qualities of relationship to self and others characteristic of Klein’s account of the depressive position.
