Strong alliances will bring far greater happiness than money. In Great Expectations Charles Dickens challenges the idea that materialism results in happiness and proposes that good relationships will bring happiness. Phillip Pirrip, the protagonist, begins the story as a young boy who is living an unhappy life with no expectations. Phillip, commonly referred to as Pip, builds many good relationships in the novel. These relationships do not bring him the happiness he wants at the beginning but near the end make him truly happy and shape him into the gentleman he was set out to become. Pips less desirable relationships in the story tax on his life and make him quite unhappy. These bad relationships draw him away from his true friends and turn him into an undesirable person himself. Pip originally imagines that his great expectations would bring him great happiness; they instead make him most unhappy. The great expectation was intended to make pip a gentleman; rather they make him proud, conceited and not a gentleman at all.
             Pip's beneficial relationships shape him into a good person and bring him happiness. Joe Gargery is Pip's brother in law; Joe is one of pip's best friends and is one of the few people around whom Pip feels very comfortable. "But I loved Joe- perhaps for no better reason in those early days than because the dear fellow let me love him-"(Dickens 41). There is almost no one that loves Pip, and Joe is a person around whom Pip feels very comfortable and loved. Knowing that there is this man to which Pip can give affection, gives Pip a great sense of joy and happiness. "For Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my side, and put his arms around my neck, in his joy that I knew him" (493). After many years of not seeing Joe and neglecting his acknowledgement, Joe still comes to Pip's side when he is sick and in the hospital. This almost makes Pip cry with joy because th...