Pip

Pip

• Pip is both the hero and narrator of the story, looking back reflectively on the lessons life has taught him. He is critical of the mistakes made by his younger self.
• Dickens starts with Pip weeping for his dead family in the churchyard, establishing him as an orphan for whom we feel sorry and protective.
• Pip is a good person. He steals a file and food for the convict, but feels guilty about it. He helps Herbert Pocket to get a job. He helps Magwitch, even though it means the end of his dreams of being a gentleman.
• Pip's efforts to be a gentleman almost destroy him – he says horrible things to Biddy and is ashamed of Joe. But he maintains our sympathy because he hates himself for it.
• Pip's 'training' to be a gentleman was merely learning to eat properly and wear the 'right' clothes – showing that at the time he mistakenly thought that being a 'gentleman' was about surface wealth and manners (when really it was about inner character and worth).
• Two things 'save' Pip. Firstly, luck dashes his dreams. Secondly, those who love him stick by him.
• In the end, Pip finds happiness in hard work, 'sufficient' income, and doing the decent thing. Pip is an autobiographical projection of Dickens himself. By 1860, Dickens' marriage had failed, and he had worries about his children, and his business. In Great Expectations he tells us the conclusions of an older, wiser man with experience of setbacks – that happiness is not about being successful, but being good.