Page 170 - DENG404_FICTION

Fiction

Notes Her youth has gone, although her beauty remains. She is softened, friendly. Neither has been
back, each returns for the first time. It is the only possession that Estella keeps, and finally it
is going to be built on. She remembers Pip as a thing of worth she threw away-she has thought
of him a great deal.

14.1 Part III, Chapters 1–10 (40–49)

Part III: Chapter 1
Pip gets up and eats breakfast with the convict, who tells him his name is Magwitch though
he is going by Provis while in England. Pip is disgusted with him, though, at the same time,
he wants to protect him and make sure he isn’t found and put to death. Pip buys some clothes
for him that will make him look like a “prosperous farmer.”
Pip goes to Jaggers to verify that this man is his benefactor. Indeed, Jaggers assures him that
Miss. Havisham had nothing to do with his great expectations.

Analysis

Pip is closer to Magwitch than he knows since they both base the value of people on societally
structured hierarchies. Pip still believes that one’s value is decided by the class one is born,
or adopted, into. Because he thinks of Magwitch as the lowest of the low, he thinks himself
the lowest of the low because of his association with him. Magwitch does not see it this way.
Instead, he believes that the amount of money you have, and how ostentatiously you spend
it, is what gives one value. Thus, he has spent his life working for money to make a poor
blacksmith boy a “gentleman.”

Part III: Chapter 2

Herbert meets Magwitch. Pip brings Magwitch to a nearby inn, then returns to discuss with
Herbert “what is to be done.”
Pip feels he cannot take any more of Magwitch’s money, mostly because Pip is still proud and
it is the money of a criminal. At the same time, Pip does not want Magwitch’s execution on
his hands which will surely occur if it is discovered he is back in England. Pip wants to protect
Magwitch since he has risked his life to come back to see him.
The two decide that Pip will try and convince Magwitch to leave England with him. After that,
they’ll see what happens. Magwitch returns for breakfast the next morning, and Pip asks him
about the other convict that Pip had seen him fighting with in the marshes on the Christmas
day long in the past.

Task Why is it necessary to move Magwitch?

Analysis

The reader has been shown very few moments when Young Pip has been happy. Pip was
unhappy even when he should have been happy — during his apprenticeship with Joe — and
continued to be unhappy even when great expectations were announced for him. Now a great
mystery has been solved in the way of the appearance of Pip’s benefactor, and Pip is, once
again, unhappy. We notice, however, that Pip is unhappy not so much because of his circumstances
but because of how he views those circumstances. And although many in the novel are living

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