Great Expectations
Pip
The hero and narrator
An orphan raised at a Kent forge who comes into mysterious money, moves to London to become a gentleman, and has to learn what that really means.
Pip is a village boy raised "by hand" by his sister and her husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. He is imaginative, tender-hearted and eager to be better than he is. A frightening meeting with an escaped convict in the churchyard when he is small sets the whole story going, and Pip carries the guilt of that night for years.
What Pip wants is to rise: first to please Estella, whose beauty and scorn at Satis House make him ashamed of his hands and boots, and then to become a true gentleman. His good heart is real, but it is under pressure from vanity. As his fortunes improve he becomes snobbish toward the people who love him best, and he knows it.
“I will never forget you, Joe. Nor you, Biddy.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Pip steals food and a file for the convict, is apprenticed to Joe, and is told by the lawyer Jaggers that a secret benefactor will make him a gentleman. In London he shares rooms with Herbert Pocket, runs into debt, and quietly pays for Herbert's start in business. He is embarrassed by Joe's visit and cold to the village.
The benefactor turns out to be Magwitch, the convict, which shatters his dreams. Pip risks everything to help him escape, stays with him until he dies, and falls into a fever. Joe nurses him and pays his debts. Pip returns to the forge, works abroad as a clerk and then a partner, and eleven years later meets Estella among the ruins of Satis House.
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