 Plot Summary: In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens there is young boy named Philip Pirrip, also known as Pip. The story plot wraps around Pip and his progress through life after an unexpected encounter with the escaped convict named Abel Magwitch, who he takes care of sympathetically regardless of his foreboding. His repulsive sister and her witty and pleasant blacksmith husband, named Joe, raise Pip throughout his childhood. Essential to his progress as a sociable gentleman is his meeting of Miss Havisham, an aging woman who has given up on her life after being left at the altar by a man named Compeyson, who worked with Miss Havisham’s brother, Arthur, just for the reason to steal her money. Cruelly, Miss Havisham has brought up her adopted daughter Estella to revenge her own suffering and so as Pip falls in love with her, Estella is made to torture him in beguile romance. Aspiring to be a gentleman, Pip coincidentally attains the impossible by receiving an endowment of money from an anonymous benefactor and is being sent to London with the lawyer, Jaggers, to acquaint Pip to a tutor named Mathew Pocket, distant relative to Miss Havisham, who will teach him to become a gentleman. Pip is in employment but in the end loses everything and Estella marries another, an adversary to Pip named Bentley Drummle. Pip’s mysterious benefactor turns out to have been Magwitch, the convict that he had befriended earlier in the story. Magwitch is in a jam that Pip along with his friend Herbert Pocket tries to help him out, but then Magwitch is caught and dies in jail. After the numerous relocations, Pip comes back where he started from and returns to his childhood home to get back in the blacksmith business with Joe. Author's Theme: Maturing is more than just getting older; it is being influenced but the things around you that shape you into a better and mature person. |