What does Pip learn and how does he learn it during the course of Great Expectations?

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What does Pip learn and how does he learn it during the course of Great Expectations?

Throughout Charles Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’ Pip’s character undergoes constant changes when it develops, matures, and his experience of the outside world grows.  Dickens tells the story through Pip narrating and this gives him a personal connection with the reader and it is easy to understand and reciprocate his feelings.  One of the main themes in ‘Great Expectations’ is the idea of change.  Pip experiences the rise to an upper-class life and then the fall from grace initiated by the return of Magwitch.

        One of the major things that Pip learns about is love; love within families, love between friends, and most important, his love for Estella.  Before his visit to Satis House Pip has had almost no contact with girls his age and so on meeting Estella, a girl of such elegance and beauty, he experiences feelings and emotions which are completely new to him.  He is amazed by her power and the way she puts Mr Pumblechook down.  She calls him ‘boy’ and commands him with tremendous authority.  She says things like ‘don’t loiter boy’ (Ch. 8 p. 55) and ‘don’t be ridiculous boy’ (Ch.8 p.56) which make Pip feel pathetic and useless.  Pip starts to feel an immense passion for Estella and the bitter reception that she gives him just strengthens and feeds his obsession with her.  Pip realises the strength and complications of love through his obsession and is prepared to go to any extreme just to win her heart.  Dickens creates a cold-hearted, younger version of Miss Havisham to destroy Pip and shatter his heart.  He uses cruel and insulting language to reject Pip from the higher class of living and makes him think about his current humble life at the forge.  Estella calls him a ‘common labouring-boy’ (Ch. 8 p.59) which puts Pip in his place and makes him think about the way he lives.  The fact that Estella says that Pip has ‘coarse hands’ (Ch.8, p.60) and wears ‘thick boots’ (Ch.8, p.60) upsets him and shows us how insensitive Estella can be.  This is the first time in his childhood that Pip has become self-conscious of his appearance and this is where is desire to be a gentleman begins.  Dickens makes the reader feel sorry for Pip in this first visit to Satis House.  He is at an age when he is easily influenced and he is almost helpless to insults and criticism thrown at him.    

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        All the way through ‘Great Expectations’ from his childhood in the marshes to his life as a gentleman, Pip is forever learning about himself.  He is very ignorant about who he is and refuses to even consider returning to his humble life from his luxury life as a gentleman.  Self-knowledge and self-discovery is an important theme in the novel.  Pip rejects his humble origins at the forge and aspires to become a gentleman.  Although he is given material wealth and taught table manners and how to speak in a different may, he loses much in the process.  It is only ...

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