Comparing Chapter 1 of Great Expectations where Pip first meets the convict, with Chapter 39 where the convict returns.

Authors Avatar
In this assignment I will be comparing Chapter 1 of Great Expectations where Pip first meets the convict, with Chapter 39 where the convict returns.

Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations in 1860-1861 when he was in London. It is set in the mid nineteenth century, in Kent, and London. The basic plot of Great Expectations is:

Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery one evening looking at his parents' tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from behind a tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items himself. One day his uncle takes him to Miss Havishams house to play. A few years later he is apprenticed to his sisters husband. One-day pip is told that he is to live in London and has great expectations thanks to a secret friend. A couple of years after this the convict comes back to pip and tells him that he is the person that has been supplying all the money to him and that ever since Pip help him he promised himself that he would make Pip a gentleman. Pip is appalled at this but helps the convict to escape back to Australia. Before the convict escapes he is caught is put back into prison, he gets ill and dies. Before he dies he tells Pip that he has a daughter who was put up for adoption when she was a baby. Pip believes this to be Estella (who he used to play with at miss Havishams house and is in love with her). Miss havisham has died and has left her money to the pockets. Pip decides to go abroad with his friend to work. After some have past Pip comes back home where he goes to Miss Havishams old house where he finds Estella. He finds her coldness and hardness has been replaced with a sad kindness. The couple leave the house hand in hand.

Dickens changed the ending of the story. The original ending had Pip and Estella meeting outside miss Havishams talking a while and then going there separate ways. Dickens based some of the book on his own experiences; apart from David Copperfield this story is the most autobiographical book he wrote.

I will now compare the different circumstances of the two main characters two chapters:

In chapter 1 we see Pip as a young boy visiting his parents graves. He is small and frightened by the convict. He is terrified by what the convict says will happen to him if he doesn't do what the convict wants.

"`You get me a file.' He tilted me again. `And you get me wittles.' He tilted me again. `You bring 'em both to me.' He tilted me again. `Or I'll have your heart and liver out.' He tilted me again."

The convict has escaped from prison and is hiding in the graveyard where Pip is. He was dressed in "all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head." He was covered in mud and was soaked in water. "A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin." He was desperate for food and would do anything to get some.

In chapter 39 we see Pip when he is 23 years old, living in London thanks to a secret friend. He has all the money he needs to live a life of luxury. He resents seeing the stranger who has turned up on his doorstep, but he thinks he has seen the man before. When he finally realises that it is the convict who this stranger is, he wants him gone. Pip doesn't want the convict touching him and keeps backing away from him when the convict goes to touch him. "At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace me, I laid a hand upon his breast and put him away."

The convict has risked his life to come back from Australia to see Pip and tell him the answer Pip wanted to know. He is a changed man he now lives in New South Wales Australia where he is a very good sheep farmer. He has made a lot of money and has given every last bit of it to Pip so he could become a gentleman it was his way of thanking Pip for his kindness when he was a young boy." Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you!" The convict sees Pip as a son he never had. "`Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son -- more to me nor any son."

Now I will compare the different settings of the two chapters:

In chapter 1 we are taken to a graveyard it is overgrown with weeds, and is the resting place of Pips father, mother, and his bothers. "At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried;" It is very dark and there is flat land beyond the graveyard which is cut with dykes, mounds, and gates with cattle feeding on the land, the land is referred to as the mashes with a river by it. "Dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes."
Join now!


Whereas in chapter 39 we are taken to Pips new house "near the river" in London, it is a very horrible night it is raining very hard and a storm is picking up. The streets are covered in mud. The wind was stripping roofs of their lead and tiles; it had been like it for a few days. "It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if ...

This is a preview of the whole essay