In the close of chapter one, the convict is associated with death. Pip when looking back to the graveyard, he sees the convict walking away holding himself with his own arms, and in the narrator of the older Pip he sees him as if he was “Eluding the hands of the dead people.” When we see this convict in these poor conditions we pity him, we feel sorry for the fact that he is suffering badly.
In the last paragraph Pip talks about lines he sees when looking back to the convict. He imagines these lines to be like a prison cell, and he only sees the convict as if he is behind bars. Also for the local people they refer to the marshes as “meshes” which are like being imprisoned because you are trapped and constructed so Pip and the reader’s also think that he is still living in a jail like environment. Pip seeing this knows that the convict is never going to escape the marshes. Pip in the last paragraph repeats the words “red” and “black”. Saying red repeatedly is associated with the violence of the convict and black associates with the darkness of this situation. This sense of feeling for the convict can only of come from the mature, grown up Pip who only realises the suffering and pain Magwitch is going through.
When Pip had talked with the convict he had been told to bring him food and drink he immediately feels guilty. He feels guilty because he knows that to get the supplies for the convict he has to steal them from Mrs Joe. Pip all night wouldn’t eat because he knew he had to save it for the convict otherwise the promised killer would come and tear his liver and heart out and eat them this made him frightened. “Though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice of bread.” Pip having all this guilt inside him is because of the way his sister has brought him up that she has said to him that he should be very grateful for him to be alive. It makes him think like he shouldn’t be here he should be on the hulks because he is going to steal.
“I looked disconsolately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young the file the food, the dreadful, and me pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises rose before me in the avenging coals.” He also feels ashamed of what he is about to do.
Also there is Mr Pumblechuck making Pips life feel as though it is not worth living. “Be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand.”
Pip when he wakes up in the morning and goes down the stairs to steal more food from the pantry for the convict he imagines every floor board creaks as if to warn Mrs Joe as to what he is about to do. “I got up and went down stairs; every board was calling after me, ‘stop, thief!’ and ‘Get up Mrs Joe’”
When Pip has left the house and is on his way to see the convict his conscience is not clear. Dickens shows us this by having the weather representing his conscience the weather is wet and misty. He is in a state of moral confusion. Pip knew he was doing wrong and he could be punished very badly for this, but he knows he needs to save this convicts life and deliver the food and whittles like he promised he would do. Everything around him suggests that he is troubled by doing this wrong deed when he is on his way to the convict he gives himself imaginative thoughts that he is going to be caught and sent to the hulks. He thinks that the sign post is acting as a person’s hand pointing in the direction of the hulks. “I couldn’t help it sir! It wasn’t for myself I took it.”
When Pip is talking to the convict he notices a click in his throat but Pip being young doesn’t understand what it is and is confused, he just thinks it is a mechanical click. “Something clicked in his throat, as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeves over his eyes.” Pip helps us to understand and see how scary and unhealthy the convict is. He also makes us feel sorry for the convict as he says to Pip “You’d be but a young hound indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill, as this poor wretched warmint is!”
In this next chapter of the story Mrs Joe, her guests and the soldiers are all enjoying themselves in the forge; meanwhile Joe is dealing with the handcuffs that need to be opened. Pip is thinking about the “two villains”. Pip puts these words in speech marks in the story to suggest an irony about this term for them. “And now, when they were all in lively anticipation of ‘the two villains’ being taken, and when the bellows seemed to roar for the fugitives, the fire to flare for them, the smoke to hurry away in pursuit of them, Joe to hammer and clink for them, and all the murky shadows on the wall to shake at them in menace as the blaze rose and sank, and the red hot sparks dropped and died, the pale afternoon outside almost seemed in my pitying young fancy to have turned pale on their account, poor wretches.” In this Pip is talking about the villains and he feels sorry for them “Poor wretches.” Also Pip when he says “The red-hot sparks dropped and died” he is saying this as if the villains are the sparks and they are about to be caught and go back to the hulks and never to be seen again as if they were to be dead, he pities them.
Pip and Joe when they are running in the marshes to try and get “the two villains” they whisper to each other that they hope the two villains aren’t caught. Pip says to Joe “I hope, Joe, we shan’t find them.” And Joe replies “I’d give a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip.” When Pip and the convict make eye-contact Pip feels very guilty about his betrayal to the convict and shakes his head as if to say he didn’t tell them. “I looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me that I might try to assure him of my innocence.”
When the convict is being taken to the hulks Pip sees the boat “cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison ship in my young eyes to look like it was ironed like the prisoners.” Pip sees this boat like as if it was a prisoner itself being no escape from its captives. When the convict is on the boat and the guards throw the torches out of the hulk he imagines the torch to represent the convicts end. “Then, the ends of the torches were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over for him.”
As we look back at Pips life and the way he is treated we see that he isn’t treated well in the Gargery household. He is punished very badly by Mrs Joe but not by Joe, Joe likes the company of Pip and gets on with him very well.
Mrs Joe treats Pip with no respect because she thinks she has brought him up “by hand” meaning both physically and by herself whom she suggests has been hard work. Mrs Joe punishes Pip mentally and physically. She tells him that she wishes that she had never accepted the opportunity to bring him up by hand and she would never do it again. She is angry with herself for accepting him and takes her anger out on Pip so she tells him over and over again that he should be very grateful at all times to the fact that he wouldn’t be living if it wasn’t for her accepting that she has taken the responsibility of bringing him up as a child. “I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in a position against the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.”
Dickens describes the attitude of Mrs Joe and Pip in a humorous way. Pip says “I had been guilty of, and all the sleepless nights I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I had continuously refused to get there.” Dickens is describing Mrs Joe’s attitude with humour because when he says “committed” this to us sounds like Pip has just committed a crime or done something bad, but he hasn’t Mrs Joe is punishing Pip and is making him feel guilty for being alive. Pip is only a child doing childish things and Mrs Joe doesn’t like it and she can’t accept the fact that he isn’t doing it on purpose.
When we have the first view of Pips life at home we automatically see that he is badly done to. Pip comes home from the Marshes a little bit late and he slowly walks into his house and he only sees Joe he says to him that Mrs Joe is looking for him and is very angry. Mrs Joe is the type of person you wouldn’t mess around with “She was not a good looking woman, my sister.” “She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much.” Pip here is telling us about how Mrs Joe lives and that she is always wearing this apron for a number of reasons. She wears it to say to Joe that he not going to see her in anything more than this bib and her also wears it because she thinks she should and that she is never able to rest and that she is always working for Joe and Pip when obviously she doesn’t. When she finally catches Pip she is hitting him with a “tickler” this is an ironic name because it is a was ended stick used for beating people. The irony of this is also in a humoured way. There is also a sense here that she is punishing herself as well.
The way in which Mrs Joe cuts the bread is very significant to us because it shows us how wicked and mean she is. She jams the loaf into her gut were it would get a pin into it every now and then. Then she would get some butter, not too much and slap it on in an apothecary way, she would then trim the butter from around the edges and put it back into the tub. Mrs. Joe here is very tight on the butter and she won’t let Joe or Pip have any of that extra taste. So even in feeding them she is punishing them.
When we see the life of Miss Havisham and her house, she is described as though she has imprisoned herself in her own home. This imprisonment is not the same as the way Magwitch is imprisoned she has tried to stop time for herself. She has done this because on the day she wanted to stop time she got stood up by her fiancé who was to be her husband. She found out that he wasn’t going to marry her when a letter was sent to her so she stopped time as though she didn’t want her life to go on without him. We find out at the end of the story that her fiancé was Compisant. Miss Havisham is allowed to do this because she is rich where as Compisant cant because he is poor.
When Pip is first going to see Miss Havisham he describes to us what the house is like and what state Miss Havisham lives in. “Within the quarter of the hour we came to Miss Havishams house which was of old brick, and dismal, and a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred.” The rooms which are “walled up” are the rooms that Miss Havisham stays in. She walled them up because she wanted to stop the light from getting to her, doing this would be like stopping time which she wanted.
When Pip first sees Miss Havisham he describes her as an old woman. “She was dressed in rich materials – satins, lace, and silks all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. He is describing her that she is in all white; she is still in her wedding dress from the day she was stood up. When she was “stood up” the pain that she had gone through was very bad and she decided to restrict her feelings for somebody else and then this way she wouldn’t have to go through the pain again. Miss Havisham also had a ward, her name was Estella Miss Havisham decided to bring her ward up to be cold and have no feelings for others all because she didn’t want her to feel the pain that she felt. We see that this is a very unnatural way to live. It is a life denying and this is symbolized by the denial of sunlight and her life.
When Pip hasn’t even got to the house he says “I had heard of Miss Havisham up town – everybody for miles round had heard of Miss Havisham up town – an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers and who led a life of seclusion.” Pip here is thinking about what she and her house are going to be like and whether or not he should be frightened. This is our first indication of her self imprisonment.
When Pip has to stay in Mr. Pumblechoock’s house he notices the way that seeds are kept in drawers, and with his imaginary mind he thinks that they are imprisoned and want to get out and bloom. This is symbolic of Miss Havisham because she has been imprisoned in darkness and there for has not been able to “bloom” or grow in any way.
