Great Expectations is an important work by English novelist Dickens.His novels not only reflect the life experience of a whole generation genuinely,but also disclose the social reality vividly in England in the middle 19th century.Its depth and width go beyond most of the works of his contemporaries.Great Expectations is the excellent novel of critical realism in the later period of Dickens.It describes the de-velopment of Pip’s grown-up and the disillusion of his“great expectations”.Educated by the reality,he came to realize what he pursued in the Vanity Fair was not valuable at all.So as to see clearer the great power of critical realism in Dickens’works and thus can understand the no-vel,this thesis analyzes the hero’s character development and the influential factors upon the formation of his character.