Everything had gone wrong in the Oblonsky household
Just so there should be no mistake as to which of the two sorts of family is going to be the subject of the story. In the main, it's the unhappy families that make the better novels.
You can see that as tragedy avoided: Pip not having to drown in the cold, unpeopled waters of his distaste, Pip learning to accept the limits of being a person born to people; but the assertion of human interconnectedness - the wall in which we must be bricked, the hard face the world will always turn against our longing to be free - is tragic too. Just because the thing we long for cannot be, is no reason not to long for it. Why else do we go on turning pages but in the hope that this time the glorious unfamilied, unfettered universe behind the sun has been attained?
· Turn blood to water [ courtesy of Guardian ]
· Eragon: Meet the 21st-century Tolkien [ via Double Dragon Publishing: Where and when is Middle Earth to you? ]