Pip learns the essential lessons

My copy of Great Expectations

Charles Dickens does not appear in the list of my favourite novelists, notwithstanding the fact that he is an admirable story-teller. He weaves fantastic plots with too much happening at any time. There are all sorts of characters in his works. There is no dearth of melodrama and sentiments, and even the grotesque. In spite of all that, Dickens remains at a considerable distance from my affections. I think the problem is that his characters become conventional mouthpieces of conventional sentiments when confronted with crises.

Pip, the protagonist of Great Expectations, has remained with me for a long time. He has made some sort of an indelible impression on my fancy. His real name is Philip Pirrip but is known as Pip throughout the novel. Right in the first pages of the novel, we meet Pip as a little boy in the local cemetery where his parents are buried. As he is wandering about there, he is caught by “a fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg.” The man threatens to slit the boy’s throat if he makes any noise. Pip pleads, “O! Don’t cut my throat, sir.” The man grabs Pip by his ankles and turns him upside down to see if there are some coins in his pockets. There isn’t any; there is just a piece of bread. Pip is too poor to have any money on him.

That scene of Abel Magwitch, escaped convict, holding Pip by his ankles with the church yonder looking upside down to him, is one of the most unforgettable scenes of the novel for me. Magwitch will eventually turn Pip’s real world upside down. He will whet the boy’s longings for a far better life, his “great expectations.”

Pip wants to be a wealthy gentleman though he is an extremely poor orphan being taken care of by his sister whose husband is a simple (simpleton) blacksmith Joe. However, Pip inherits a fortune from an anonymous benefactor who later, much later, turns out to be the convict Magwitch who made it big with some luck and a lot of honest hard work. When Pip comes to know who his benefactor really is, he is shocked. His ego is hurt. His ideals rise in revolt. His moral sensibility is shaken.

As Pip rose to certain heights in society with his education and the support of the mysterious benefactor, Pip had become arrogant and snobbish. He didn’t like people like Joe anymore.

However, his awareness about his benefactor brings him down from all those social mores and slants to the raw reality. There is disillusionment and subsequent suffering. Such disillusionment and suffering can shatter a person. But in Pip’s case, it becomes a redemptive force. Pip undergoes a profound transformation. He acquires humility, sense of gratitude and loyalty to people like Joe who love him genuinely. He realises that affection and relationships are far more important than social advancement, wealth and class.

The novel ends in a typical Dickensian melodrama. Nevertheless, it is an eminent entertainer. After all, who entertained the Victorian England better than Dickens?

PS. This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon