The meeting that young Pip has with the convict Able Magwitch is one which proves to be costly in the future, in this encounter Pip is turned upside down and, threatened and intimidated to get what the Magwitch demands him to get . . At this moment in time he is very hungry , because he has just escaped from the hulks .Where as on the other hand a poor young orphan(Pip) has been turned upside down and threatened , in this scene Pip is threatened and intimidated by the convict (Able Magwitch).
The meeting with the convict scene in the novel "Great Expectations" explains how Pip is threatened and intimidated by the convict (Magwitch) who is very violent as he threatens Pip, This makes Pip feel intimidated, too. Pip meets Magwitch in a very bleak dull graveyard on the empty dark flat wilderness of the Kent marshes. Pip was at the graveyard visiting his parents' graves; at that point Pip had already wanted to go home before Magwitch jumped out at him. The graveyard was a cold depressing place. Dickens describes the wind as coming from a "savage lair", and describes Pip as ‘a small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all’.
The character of Able Magwitch is one which differs as time goes on, from one point in time his an aggressive convict, who threatens to cut Pip’s throat ‘I’ll cut your throat’. From the firat meeting he has with Pip he is in desperate need of food and a file this is because he has just escaped from the Hulks. When Magwitch turns Pip upside down in the novel, this can be translated by readers and the audience as a metaphor for indeed just how much Magwitch does change Pip's life around. When Pip first meets Able Magwitch he does not look down on him as if in society there levels are equal with one another . However, snobbish attitudes towardsMagwitch soon develop when Pip has been informed by Jaggere that he is a man with ‘great expectations’. Therefore, when Magwitch returns into Pip's life, Pip looks down on the man who has provided for and supported him, simply because he is not a gentleman in society , this interpreted by the reader when Pip say ‘would you like a drink before you leave’. This is a great irony as is the convict had kept the money to himself, Pip would’ve became a blacksmith with Joe Gargery, and on the other hand Magwitch would have been the gentleman in the upper section of society. "The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him’ Pip doesn’t find that it is so easy to take it in that his benefactor is a convict in which he helped on one Christmas day many years ago, this is to him as if it’s a disgrace.
From chapter 2 a lot is gained by the reader because they learn that is a child which was ‘brought up by hand’ and that he does not know what this ‘meant’ he compares himself to Joe and he not knowing what the phrase means thinks that because they are both accustomed to getting beatings from his mad sister whose ‘ 20 years older ‘ than Pip.Pip refers to himself and Joe as ‘ fellow sufferes’ through the savage beating of his sister. From the moment Pip gets home he is told that his sisters has been out on the ‘rampage’ looking for him and what’s worse she’s got ‘tickler’( a waxed ended piece of cane used to beat Pip). Joe is the brother-in-law to Pip , but he is also a loyal companion to Pip and decent / loyal friend but on the other hand his sister is disgraced because she’s married to ‘the blacksmiths’ . Pip was raised in the home of a blacksmith which is hardly inexplicable, the atmosphere nearby is bleak and overgrown nettles on the eerie marsh country. In the household Pip is bottom of the food chain, he is treated as though his villain and a ne-re-do-ell.
In the next chapter Pip is frightened because he has a superstition/theory that the other convict might have escaped and is outside for waiting for Pip. When Pip steals the file and the ‘wittles’ for the convict he is scared that by stealing from Joe he may lose the friendship and companionship of Joe . By doing this theft he is feeling very guilty and, due to his wild imagination he thinks the cows are coming for him and that he may be severely punished for helping the desperate convict. Through Pip’s journey through the bleak misty/foggy marshlands and into the misty churchyard. The bleak and foggy atmosphere that is around is emphasising that is a cold and frosty Christmas day , but the fog on the other hand is a different matter throughout the novel, Dickens empahasises the fact that ‘the fog is oblique object which is hiding the answer and secrets’.
In chapter 9 and 10 Pip receives two pound notes and one shilling off a mysterious stranger at the village inn, but he has suspicions that the mysterious giver is Magwitch he comes to acknowledge this when under the table Magwitch, shows Pip a sight off the file . This raises Pip’s suspicions but when he is given the exceptionally good news that he has a benefactor he doesn’t either consider Magwitch to be the mysterious benefactor.
Dickens creates Pip's childhood as unpleasant and full of misfortune. He encounters many fearful characters (example Magwitch) and does not have the most loving of families. Pip goes through hard journeys to become an independent, mature, young 'gentleman' in society, from a scared "small bundle of shivers". "Great Expectations" is a journey which shows Pip's personal growth and development throughout the novel. Dickens uses different techniques of language, the context of Victorian attitudes and comedy with self-deprecating humour and comic asides. In the first chapter, Pip has his first encounter with fear . This is when he meets the runaway convict in the 'dark, flat wildernesses’ ‘overgrown with nettles’ which is the Kent marshes. The condition of his surroundings increases the fear that Pip feels and is described by Dickens as a 'savage lair' in which dismal and 'bleak' things are situated such as the gibbet, he thinks that his going to be punished or even taken away by the guards for his wrong doings. Cannons were fired too let the local community know that there had been two escapees. The wind is described as being ‘distant savaged’ this means that yet it’s so far away it hiding itself, here Dickens personifies the wind . The situation Pip is in is similar to another ‘Little Dorit’ which is another of the Dickens novels in which the Dorit family go from the poor section of society to the distinguished upper class off society.
Pip is a boy who comes from a background of working class society. Pip was a common working boy; he was used to his status and was happy. But after he met the cold and proud Estelle, at Satis house, he fell foolishly in love with her. He became ashamed of himself, ashamed of his family and ashamed of his work. That was when he discovered his "great expectations". A few years later, Pip was told that he had a mysterious benefactor, whose name must remain a secret until that person decided to tell Pip himself. Pip foolishly thought that it must be Miss Havisham, who made him an apprentice to Joe Gargery - his sister’s husband and his loyal companion. Pip, was amazed by his luck, and was then moved to London to become a gentleman. During that period in London, Pip discovered the real person who was his mysterious benefactor was Magwitch the convict which he had met all those years ago in the marshland churchyard .
At the beginning of chapter 59 Pip finds himself Pip finds himself returning to his roots , where he grew up as a child and was raised ‘brought up by hand’ , but this time his a gentleman who has acquired a great fortune from his business in India through the spice industry , the day Pip returns is on Christmas day where he meets his god-son Pip who is the son of Joe and Biddy. When uncle Pumblechook arrives he treats Pip Gargery the same way he treated Phillip Pirrip. Pip then finds out that Satis house is to become a railway pass through but then a phrase from uncle pumblechook stumbles him ‘no-one’s ever too old to learn’, he then decides to go back and visit the ruins of Satis house there he meets Estella whose a widow now and there he see’s her confess that she was wrong to have married Bentley Drummel, that he was a man who beat her day in ,day-out. There they depart as friends.But the question we ask ourselves is why didn’t Pip reveal the secret that he knew who Estella’s father was and that he was still alive?
"Great Expectations" has been described as the story of a "snob's progress throughout life". In the prose of this comment, describe Pip's personal statuses development in the novel. Refer to the changes in the way he behaves and talks, the reactions of other characters in the novel and the reasons why he normally retains the reader's sympathy. In "Great Expectations", Pip's character goes through many changes. His life is greatly affected by his lifestyle, and his view of other characters is changed by his experiences and surroundings this all relates to the class which have been accustomed to in England. At the beginning of "Great Expectations", we see Pip as a very young child, living in fear of his mad sister, Mrs Joe Gargery. Joe is described in much the same way, which shows how he is childish at heart.
To conclude I thought the novel relates back too how life was back in the 19th century and what the social class meant to some individuals, how it impacted their lives and they way they lead their lives. Through the journey off a young orphan who only has one remaining family member who bullies him to a gentleman of great expectations, who is lucky in life and has a help in hand from his mysterious benefactor. Then towards the end he learns that being a gentleman wasn’t what he really wanted it was really Estella and knowing that Estella was wrong to have married Drummel. As a reader I found that the ending is not that convincing to the modern day an age this is because there is never a happy ending for everyone there always is a twist to the tail, and the ending where Pip supposedly meets Estella at Satis house “is that a coincidence or what”.I understand that the first ending was one which would have been convincing for this modern age but not for the modern era of the 19th century, I full heartedly believe that Dickens should have kept the original ending .From the readers point o view that is one which is quite convincing rather than it being a ‘coincidence’.
