The Relationship between Joe and Pip throughout the whole Novel.

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                Trusen Patel

The Relationship between Joe and Pip throughout the whole Novel

        Pip when we first see him in the book is made out to be a small, feeble eleven-year old boy who is an orphan and lives with his elder sister, Mrs. Gargery. He spends some of his time around his dead mother and numerous brothers in the graveyard. As he is an orphan, his elder sister takes care of him with the aid of Joe Gargery, her husband who is a blacksmith.

             Joe is a simple man, an uneducated man; he isn’t the cleverest person, the richest person or even on the social ladder. Unlike most people Joe doesn’t care about the richer or the higher orders. He is a mild-mannered person who is considerate and tolerant. As his father beat him when he was a child, he wanted to be a good influence on Pip and treat him well, the contrary of what his father did for him. Yet his father and his wife, the same as what happened to Pip, hit him. This made him look like a child in Pip’s eyes and he treated Joe as a larger species of child. In this book Joe was probably the single person who was honest, calm and sincere. This meant that in this book he was a moral compass, pointing true north and is a constant that doesn’t change in the whole story. Because of all of this, Pip saw Joe as a “sweet tempered, easy going, good natured, foolish dear fellow”.

        As Pip sees his elder sister treating Joe as she does him, he doesn’t see him as a father figure but more as a friend and a larger species of child who is also suffering and is being treated the same way as he is. This is why in the book Pip can relate to Joe better, but this is not always the case. Once Pip turns into a man who is looking to climb the social ladder and be rich, he loses his admiration for Joe as a good man because he is not rich and he does not have the etiquette to be in the higher orders. This can be seen when Pip says to Joe, “I wish you hadn’t taught me to call knaves at cards, Jacks.” This shows us that Pip is trying to gain entry into the higher order and he punishes Joe for not teaching him correctly by telling him this, which would undeniably hurt his feelings. Joe knows that Pip doesn’t want to be common anymore as he says, “ that ain’t the way to get out of being common.” This statement in conjunction with the one about calling Jacks Knaves shows that Joe embarrasses Pip for not being rich, in the upper order or even able to read and write.

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        When the convict threatened Pip he didn’t tell Joe about this and thieves some food and a file for the convict anyway. This shows that he didn’t have a lot of faith in Joe or he felt that he couldn’t share everything with Joe and couldn’t confide with him, but later on in the book when he lies to his sister and Mr. Pumblechook about the description of Miss Havisham, he could tell Joe about that. This may be because the problem wasn’t that important this time, so this means that he doesn’t think he can confide in Joe about ...

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