One Day to Define Them All

So we have discussed the way in which Great Expectations is narrated and who that narrator is, a male named Pip who starts of as an orphan and eventually becomes a well to do gentleman. (Although we have full insight into what Pip thinks and feels, how he hates when adults ruffel his hair or how his sister who is raising him treats him so poorly, we actually never get a phyiscal description of Pip. Interesting) This drastic change in status is arguably the main focus of the story and it is all thanks to a single act of Pips. One that occurs in the very beginning of the novel and is referenced to many times later throughout the story and Pip's development. That one act is simple: helping a man in need. This is a common trend in stories, the main character aids a helpless wanderer. That wanderer, unbeknownst to the character is actually an angel, a milionaire, a princess, or someone who later returns the favor and makes the life of the main character more intersting. This is exactly what happens to Pip, although with a little bit of a spin. Pip is out wandering the marshes on a cold foggy day, he is actually observing the graves of his dead parents, and he is attackd by a convict who turns him upside down and shakes his pockets empty. Afer doing so, the convict threatens to have Pip's "heart and liver out" if he doesn't bring him a file for his shakel and food the following day. Pip being a young, friegthend orphan rushes home (he lives with his sister who makes sure he knows how much of a pain he is) and plots to steal a file from his "father" Joe and food from the pantry. He ends up being successful and the convict is saved from starvation and disappears off into the fog. Yes! Done! Pip is free from having his liver and heart removed, well not exactly. He actually accompanies a group of soldiers later along with his father figure, Joe Gargary, to search out the convict and is witness to his rearrest. This 'convict' or reference to the action that took place on the marshes is  then hint to on and off again for the rest of the story. For example, Pip goes to the Three Jolly Bargemen, the local pub in town, and while there he meets a secret stranger who stirs his drink with a file. A very peculiar thing to do, if you do not get the reference back to the convict in which Pip gave a file. This stranger also bestows Pip with a shilling, a shilling wrapped in two one pound notes. A not very large gift, but a gift none the less. Possibly repaying the favor that Pip did for him? The next rather odd encounter that Pip has is when a man named Jaggers enters town and tells Pip and Joe that Pip has come into a great deal of money. Such a great deal in fact, that he is going to be made a gentleman with land and have "great expectations" (I always love it when the title of the book reappears within the novel). However, Pip is not to know who the mysterious benefactor is, until the benefactor sees it right to make himself/herself known. Until then Pip is bestowed in to the custody of Mr. Jagggers and travels to London to be educated. In an effort of Pip's to see Estella, essentially the reason he wants to become a gentleman (as he said earlier to another orphan he grew up with so that in order to become worthy of Estella he would have to improve his position), he runs into two convicts being taken off to prison ships. One of which Pip recognizes as "his convict". He over hears him talking about paying a a man to "find out that boy that had fed him and kept his secret", this is undoubtly "his convict". Now upon Pip's twenty first birthday, Jaggers tells him that he has come into the bulk of his "expectations" and that he shall recieve five hundred pounds as a yearly allowance from now on. That is a pretty substational amount of money when two pounds was a big deal earlier while Pip lived with Joe. Here, while in London, Pip meets his mysterious benefactor. It is, in fact, the convict that Pip helped those many years ago on the marshes. His name is Abel Magwitch and he plays a large part in the underlying them that Dickens incorporates into Great Expectations, one of which the true goodness in someone comes from their soul and that wealth corrupts that soul.