Within the explanation of this is another fact about the character Pip which induces sympathy; he never knew what his parents looked like and he tried to imagine what they looked like using the lettering on their gravestones from which he derived that his father was “a square stout dark man with curly black hair” and that his mother was “freckled and sickly”.
Dickens lets us see how little Pip knows of the outside world when he talks of the shape of the land and we discover he can identify only the landmarks he can see from where he stands in the churchyard a “small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry” this short statement also increases the pity we feel for Pip as we see him as small and vulnerable.
In the time that Pip is talking to Magwitch we begin – if possible – to feel even more sympathy for him as the frightful looking convict displays a mercilessly violent streak as he threatens and bullies Pip into submission.
Magwitch seems to be in control of the situation the whole time this is shown when he starts running away and Pip doesn’t even think of doing the same this again shows his defencelessness and when Magwitch returns the short distance to Pip’s side the predicament only gets worse and Magwitch demands that Pip bring him some food and a file he knows Pip can lay hands on these because Pip told him that he lives with the local blacksmith.
Magwitch frightens Pip using the image of a “young man” who has a way “of getting at a boy and at his heart and at his liver” which, he tells Pip, are to be “tore out, roasted and ate” if he tells anyone what happened in the churchyard. The fact that Magwitch is still in control and has Pip at his mercy makes us feel more sorry for Pip.
As Pip runs home he sees a beacon and a gibbet, which both serve as warnings and symbolise Dickens warning Pip of what is in store for him it can mean only one thing - troubled times and more sympathy for Pip.
When Pip enters his house he finds Joe Gargery the blacksmith in the kitchen and he is informed that Mrs Joe (as Dickens refers to her) is out looking for him for the thirteenth time and is apparently accompanied by “tickler” the way in which Joe tells Pip this shows that it is something that Pip is not fond of and we learn that it is in fact a stick with which Pip is regularly beaten for doing something wrong. Joe is also treated to violence although tickler isn’t involved because of this Pip regards Joe as a mix of a father and a brother.
As they eat their supper Pip hears the hulks (prison ships) firing a warning that there is an escaped convict at large and Pip asks Joe what the noise is and then follows up his question with another and another, this thoroughly irritates Mrs Joe and when Pip wonders what you do to earn you a place on the hulks she tells him it is murder and theft and anyone on those hulks started their life of crime by asking questions. This information frightens Pip a great deal because, of course, he has been asking questions all night and has promised Magwitch he will steal some food and a file. This makes the reader fell sorry for Pip, as Dickens intended, even more.
In chapter eight when Pip meets the attractive Estella he is made to feel very foolish and inferior to her and has to hear about how he is a common labouring boy with course hands and thick boots, he starts to blame his sister and Joe for his rough upbringing and at this point he starts acting in a peculiar way, he starts to distance himself from Joe and as he grows older, at which point the readers sympathy wanes slightly.
