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Unit 15: Great Expectations: Plot Construction

would never see her. And Magwitch never did. Pip puts is all together and tells Herbert that Notes
Magwitch is Estella’s father.

Self Assessment

State the following sentences are True or False:
1. Charles Dickens is an orphan boy and adopted by blacksmith’s family.
2. Miss. Havisham is a sister of Pip.
3. Pip goes to live in London and meets Wemmick, Jagger’s square-mouth clerk.

4. Narrator Pip describes his relationship to Estella while she lived in the city.
5. Miss. Havisham gives Pip twenty five pounds for Joe’s service to her and say good-bye.
It is time to escape with Magwitch. Herbert and Pip get up the next morning and start rowing
down the river, picking up Magwitch at the preappointed time. They are within a few feet of
a steamer that they hope to board when another boat pulls alongside to stop them. In the
confusion, Pip sees Compeyson leading the other boat, but the steamer is on top of them. The
steamer crushes Pip’s boat, Compeyson and Magwitch disappear under water, and Pip and
Herbert find themselves in a police boat of sorts. Magwitch finally comes up from the water.
He and Compeyson wrestled for a while, but Magwitch had let him go and he is presumably
drowned. Once again, Magwitch is shackled and arrested.
Magwitch is in jail and quite ill. Pip attends to the ailing Magwitch daily in prison. Pip
whispers to him one day that the daughter he thought was dead is quite alive. “She is a lady
and very beautiful,” Pip says. “And I love her.” Magwitch gives up the ghost.
Pip falls into a fever for nearly a month. Creditors and Joe fall in and out of his dreams and
his reality. Finally, he regains his senses and sees that, indeed, Joe has been there the whole
time, nursing him back to health. Joe tells him that Miss. Havisham died during his illness,
that she left Estella nearly all, and Matthew Pocket a great deal. Joe slips away one morning
leaving only a note. Pip discovers that Joe has paid off all his debtors.
Pip is committed to returning to Joe, asking for forgiveness for everything he has done, and
to ask Biddy to marry him. Pip goes to Joe and indeed finds happiness — but the happiness
is Joe and Biddy’s. It is their wedding day. Pip wishes them well, truly, and asks them for
their forgiveness in all his actions. They happily give it.
Pip goes to work for Herbert’s’ firm and lives with the now married Clara and Herbert. Within
a year, he becomes a partner. He pays off his debts and works hard.
Eleven years later, Pip returns from his work overseas. He visits Joe and Biddy and meets
their son, a little Pip, sitting by the fire with Joe just like Pip himself did years ago. Pip tells
Biddy that he is quite the settled old bachelor, living with Clara and Herbert and he thinks
he will never marry. Nevertheless, he goes to the Satis House that night to think once again
of the girl who got away. And there he meets Estella. Drummle treated her roughly and
recently died. She tells Pip that she has learned the feeling of heartbreak the hard way and
now seeks his forgiveness for what she did to him. The two walk out of the garden hand in
hand, and Pip “saw the shadow of no parting from her.”
15.2 Plot Overview

Pip, an orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery
one evening looking at his parents’ tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from
behind a tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons.

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