What is the major theme in Dickens' Great Expectations

There are essentially two major themes of all the themes
that run through Great Expectations. The one is a social theme and
the other is a personal theme. The social theme revolves around Newgate, which is a
symbol of guilt and corruption, as all major characters are guilty and corrupt in their
own way. The social theme is related to victims and victimization, which encompasses
guilt and corruption. Miss Havisham victimizes and corrupts Pip and Estella, who
victimize others in their turn: Estella victimizes Pip, as she was meant to do by Miss
Havisham, and Pip victimizes Joe by rejecting him as Pip descends into gentlemanly
corruption.

The personal theme relates to Pip's search for
identity and self knowledge and to Estella's disintegration of self under Miss
Havisham's tutelage. Both Pip and Estella find reclamation of self and knowledge of
identity in the end. Pip starts out his search for identity and self being very
susceptible to guilt, as evidenced by the imagined voices echoing behind him as he
progresses through his original crime of robbing his sister's
pantry:

every
crack in every board calling after me, "Stop thief!" and "Get up, Mrs. Joe!" ... "A boy
with Somebody's else's pork pie! Stop him!" ... "Halloa, young
thief!"

In the end, Pip
humbly comes home after eleven years abroad and comes face to face with the new Pip, a
literal offspring of Joe and Biddy and a symbolic representation of the redeemed Pip. On
the other hand, Estella is consumed with vanity and coldness that has no sentimental
feeling. Her redemption comes through her own experiences of suffering and she says
herself that suffering is the strongest teacher:

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suffering has been stronger than all other
teaching, .... I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better
shape.