Pip’s imagination is over imaginative, thinking that not even the smoke from the chimney would chance to outside on a night like this.
Pip searches around, seeing that most of the lamps have been blown out because of the wind, pip won’t even open the window, because f ‘ the teeth of such wind and rain’, using the word ‘teeth’ makes the appearance of the wind seem even more vicious.
As he hears Saint Paul’s and all the other church-clocks ring, he thinks that they sound odd,
‘The sound was curiously flawed by the wind; and I was listening, and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it, when I heard a footstep on the stair’.
When reading this sentence, there is a rising feeling of suspense, by using commas, spacing the sentence out, the suspense grows, and this is the first sign of anyone coming to see Pip.
‘What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect it with the footstep of my dead sister, matters not’.
This shows hw frightened Pip is, thinking the footsteps on the stairs are those of his dead sister. Pip carries on to listen closely for any sound of anyone approaching. Pip then remembers that the lamps are blown out, so he picks up his and goes to the stair-head to see who is there. On seeing the light, whoever was there stopped.
Pip calls out to see if anyone is there, and then asks whoever is there who he wants to see, hearing that the visitor wants to see him he is worried, but the man carries on up the stairs, In the next paragraph the suspense grows even more as the reader wait’s to see who is visiting him on such a night.
As the man comes into the light Pip sees that the man he doesn’t recognize is so happy to see him, This is also a link between Pip and the man as they obviously have met before.
Pip seed that the man is ‘roughly dressed’ and resembles a sea voyager.
As Pip starts to question the visitor, he still sees the man is delighted to see him, the visitor also respects Pip as he calls him ‘master’.
The visitor speaks in a coarse voice, and doesn’t use very good English, not the kind that Pip uses now. Pip obviously looks down on the man, so Pip appears snobbish.
The visitor goes on to say,
‘I’m glad you’ve grow’d up a game one!’
This is a mystery to Pip and the reader as the visitor let’s Pip know he’s seen him before.
In the next paragraph, Pip realizes that the man before him is far from being a stranger,
‘No need to take a file fro his pocket and show it to me; no need to take a handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head’.
This shows that Pip realizes with no doubt who he is, and he remembers like yesterday the man he saw in the churchyard.
Seeing that Pip recognizes him, he is even happier. He takes Pips hands and kisses them,
‘You acted nobly my boy’, said he ‘Noble Pip! And I have never forgot it!’
After saying this, the convict tries to embrace Pip, but Pip pushes him away, showing no affection for the convict, whilst the convict gives Pip all his affection and respect.
Pip then patronizes the convict, thinking that he had come all this way to thank Pip for giving him food when he was on the marshes,
‘I hope you have shown your gratitude by mending your way of life. If you have come here to thank me, it was nor necessary’
Pip half realizes that he has been patronizing the convict, he stops talking.
But Pip carries on to patronize the convict by saying,
‘That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you of long ago, under different circumstances’.
By saying this, Pip is not acting like the gentleman he should be, but he looks down on the convict, but on looking at it from another angle, this is what Magwitch has made him like.
As Pip prepares a drink for the convict he is still not at ease, as his hands shake as he tries to make some hot rum-and-water.
Pip sees that the convict is upset as his eyes were full of tears, probably because of what Pip told him.
Seeing this, Pip tries to make up for what he had said,
‘I hope’, ‘that you will not think I spoke harshly to you just know’.
The convict appears very emotional and upset in the next section as he explains what he’s been doing in Australia. The convict then goes on by calling Pip ‘my dear boy’.
On hearing these words, Pip tries not to make sense of them. Then he tries t change the conversation by asking Magwitch about the two one-pound notes that he was given by a messenger when he was a little boy. Again pip patronizes the convict by paying him the money back to the convict.
The convict takes the money and burns it. It was probably very insulting for Magwitch to be given a small amount of money compared to the hundreds he had given to Pip.
After this, the convict starts to reveal the real meaning behind his visit to Pip.
He starts by asking Pip how he came to such a good fortune,
‘He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire’.
Because the convict stood up, it means that the convict is in charge, he has taken a more important position, also the convict looks Pip strait in the eye as he tells Pip his story.
Pip on the other hand is no where near as confident as the convict,
‘It was only now that I began to tremble’.
Pip then went on to tell Magwitch about the property he has been chosen to succeed to.
The convict interviews pip, asking questions about the property, and then guessing how much money Pip has received after he had come of age, giving away bits of information as he goes, through doing this the suspense increases even more.
‘With my heart beating like a heavy drum of disordered action, I rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking wildly at him’.
Pip’s in a state of panic, he doesn’t know what to think.
Magwitch carries on, making Pip suffer before telling him everything. Pip probably deserved it, after all he’s treated Magwitch with no respect at all.
Pip almost has a heart attack at Magwitch tells him all the details.
Magwitch tells him of the life he endured in Australia, but Pip can’t breathe, he clutches at his heart, he can’t take anymore. Magwitch had to help Pip or else he would’ve fallen over.
‘I lived rough, that you should live smooth, I worked hard that you should be above work’.
Magwitch contrasts the different life that Pip and himself have lived. Magwitch worked hard in Australia, saving everything for Pip so that he could become a gentleman.
‘The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast’.
Pip’s reaction is totally opposite to that of Magwitch, Pip’s world is falling apart as he hears all his hopes and dreams collapse as Magwitch tells him that he financed him. Magwitch Pip that he is his ‘second father’.
Magwitch tells Pip the only reason he carried on was because he had a picture of Pip in his head. Magwitch is also delighted at Pips new way of life.
‘Again he took my hands and pulled them to his lips, while my blood ran cold within me’.
Pip was horrified at Magwitches delight, he can’t believe he can be so happy when all his hopes are dying.
Magwitch is surprised that Pip never thought that he could’ve been the one financing him over the years.
‘O no, no, no’ was Pip’s answer, ‘Never, never!’
Pip for one moment believes or hopes that maybe someone helped Magwitch finance him. But Magwitch makes it wore, by telling Pip this, he is rubbing salt into the wound.
‘O that he had never come! That he had left me at the forge-far from contended, yet by comparison, happy!’
Pip wishes Magwitch hadn’t of financed him, so he wouldn’t have been lifted to high to drop so low.
Magwitch tells Pip how he not only did it for Pip, but to get revenge on society, making something good out of what started bad.
‘”If I ain’t a gentleman, nor yet ain’t got no learning, I’m the owner of such”’
Magwitch then tells Pip he must stay with him in the flat, or else if he is caught in the country again he will be hanged, this makes it worse for Pip as he now has the convicts life in his own hands.
Pip realizes that all Estella and Miss Havisham did was use him. Pip is also scared that in the night Magwitch will kill him as he knows that Magwitch is a violent man after he saw him fighting, and the way he used to threaten Pip when he was smaller. He locks Magwitches door so that he can’t get up and commit the crime.
‘Eastward churches were striking five, the candles were wasted out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the thick black darkness’.
Pips reflecting on his state of mind (black). And also he has to look after Magwitch now, just like Magwitch looked after him, making sure he lived like a gentleman.
Frances Lowden.
