When Pip first meets Magwitch he is very naïve. Dickens begins the novel with a dramatic opening, an escaped convict threatening Pip in a dark graveyard: “keep still you little devil or I’ll cut your throat”, Pip replies: “O! Don’t cut my throat sir,” he seems to be horrified, but despite his horror of the convict, he treats him with compassion and kindness. This shows that he is polite and courteous whatever situation he is put into. He would aspire to be a gentleman, but does not as yet have the money to be educated; he really wants to learn and feels inferior whilst illiterate. It would have been easy for Pip to run to Joe or the police for help, rather than stealing the food and the file, but Pipe honours his promise to the suffering man and when he learns that the police are searching for him he even worries for his safety. Pip is presented as an extremely considerate boy in this chapter he cares for those around him and doesn’t appear to judge the convict.
As Pip enters adolescence, Dickens gradually changes the presentation of his thoughts and perceptions. When Pip was a young child, his descriptions emphasized his smallness and confusion; beginning around Chapter 14, they begin to emphasize his moral and emotional confusion. Pip becomes more aware of the qualities and characteristics of the people around him. He refrains from complaining about life in the forge out of respect for Joe’s role in his childhood: “Home was never a pleasant place for me, because of my sister’s temper. But Joe had sanctified it.” Though the respect he pays Joe is clearly admirable, Pip the narrator passes to Joe all the credit for his behavior. He says in Chapter 14, “It was not because I was faithful, but because Joe was faithful.”
Pip’s desire to elevate his social standing never leaves him; he even seeks to better his surroundings by trying to teach Joe to read. When the lawyer Jaggers appears with the message of Pip’s sudden fortune, the young man’s deepest wish comes true. Pip is not content simply to enjoy his good fortune; rather, he reads more into it than he should, deciding that “Miss Havisham intended me for Estella” and that she must be his benefactor. His adolescent self-importance causes him to be arrogant and act snobbishly toward Joe and Biddy. When Pip suddenly receives his fortune, he experiences a moment in which his wish to be a gentleman seems to have come true. But the impediments remain, and Pip is forced to contend with the entanglements of his affection for his family and his home. Feeling his emotions clash, Pip is unsure how to behave, so he tries to act like a wealthy aristocrat, a person, he imagines, who would be snobbish to Joe and Biddy. Though he is at heart a very good person, Pip has not yet learned to value human affection and loyalty above his immature vision of how the world ought to be.
The most important and most ominous development in chapter 39, is the reappearance of the convict, now a rugged old man, and the revelation that he, not Miss Havisham, is Pip’s secret benefactor. This revelation deflates Pip’s hopes that he is meant for Estella, and it completely collapses the bleak social divisions that have defined him in the novel, first as a poor labouror envious of the rich, then as a gentleman embarrassed of his poor relations. Now Pip learns that his wealth and social standing come from the labour of an uneducated convict, turning his own social values upside down. The fulfillment of his hope of being raised to a higher social class turns out to be the work of a man from a class even lower than his own.
The beginning of chapter 39 is comparable to chapter 1 in that they are both set at night, in frightening places and with the sound of footsteps, this makes a very scary and intimidating atmosphere. Pip is thinking about “the footstep of my dead sister”. Very much like his thoughts of his dead family when we first meet Pip in chapter one. However even though the setting is similar there is a role reversal between the characters Pip and Magwitch. “I wish to come in master” Magwitch is referring to Pip as his master this shows how Magwitch is now inferior as Pip is a ‘gentleman’. The power that Magwitch use to have over Pip has now changed; at the beginning Pip was not able to get away from Magwitch as he wouldn’t let him but now he is able to recoil from Magwitch. Although now Pip thinks that he can’t associate with Magwitch he still shows a spark of kindness towards him before he goes: “Will you drink something before you leave?”. The sense of duty that compels Pip to help the convict is a mark of his inner goodness, just as it was many years ago in the swamp, but he is nevertheless unable to hide his disgust and disappointment.
In chapter 56 Magwitch has just been sentenced to death, although he is already ill, Dickens criticizes the system of law and prison: “I could scarcely believe”, that the judge had just sentenced thirty two people to death for petit crimes. He uses Pip to get his point through to the readers. In this chapter we begin to see a definite change in Pip, he is becoming a real gentleman. Pip is now concerned for Magwitch and is even noticing that he is beginning to look ill and there is a change in his face. Pip is starting to see through society’s view of Magwitch and seeing the decency in him. It is made clear that Magwitch has been involved in crime since he was a child, Dickens may be saying that your childhood affects what you grow up to be, this idea is also shown in Pip because he had quite a difficult childhood, growing up with Mrs. Joe who physically abused him and also classed a gentleman as being someone with a lot of money, this could explain Pips views. Magwitch and Pip can now communicate without any words this shows a growing love between them. Pip now wants to hold Magwitch’s hand and be close to him unlike before when he was recoiling away from him. In this chapter Pip realizes his mistakes and is caring for others with no personal gain. When Magwitch dies Pip prays over his body, pleading with God to forgive his lost benefactor.
In chapter 59 Pip goes back to see Joe and Biddy, he has not visited them for five years. Pip goes to the graveyard; Dickens is finishing the novel where it started which gives it clear closure. Biddy presents a pleasant, loving family scene contrasting to that at the beginning with Joe’s sister. Pip revisits Satis house only to discover it has been burnt down, he then sees Estella there, she has also changed she is now caring and pleasant. She admits to thinking about Pip and believes that the only teaching she had was suffering. The novel ends with Pip saying: “I saw no shadow of another parting from her” this is a very ambiguous ending.
In this novel Pip has been through many distinct changes. He has learned that social class is not a criterion for happiness; that strict designations of good and evil, and even of guilt and innocence, are nearly impossible to maintain in a world that is constantly changing and that his treatment of his loved ones must be the guiding principle in his life. Though his self-description as a narrator shows that he continues to judge himself harshly, he has forgiven his enemies and been reconciled with his friends. Whether he leaves the garden with Estella or only bids her farewell in her carriage, he has finally become a gentleman.
