Analysis: “Great Expectations” (1861) [Part II]

Ummm, yeah. So I was looking through more files on my laptop and there’s apparently a Part II and a Part III (which I’ll post up tomorrow) of my Great Expectations analysis. At first, I was kind of confused, but then I remembered that we broke down the massive book into three parts and analyzed it that way in class. Man, it’s so much. Ha!

Section I: Characterization

Upon arriving at London, Pip is initially grateful for his good fortunes, but despises the filthy streets and people in the city. When he meets Herbert, he adapts to the new changes and tries to act more like a gentleman, dressing more handsomely, with Herbert teaching him manners and Mr. Pocket further advancing his education. Regarding his classmates, Pip tends to a more liking towards Startop than Drummle, while he is contempt with the latter, particularly for following Estella. Nevertheless, his affections for Estella is still the same, except he thinks she is more beautiful and is more madly in love with her, ignoring Herbert’s and Wemmick’s advice to stay away from her, waiting hours just to see her, and not believing her when she says she has a cold heart. However, her attitude towards him “gave me pain; but everything in our intercourse gave me pain. Whatever her tone with me happened to be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on against trust and against hope” (p. 284-285). His feelings toward Joe is irritation, as Pip is bothered by him being too polite, but he would later feel regretful for his cruelness towards him and Biddy. After his sister’s death, he feels the need to want to kill Orlick and is profoundly saddened by her death. At the same time, he tries to restore his relationship with Joe and Biddy, confronting the latter and telling her that he’ll visit more often. On the other hand, Pip is still terrified by the convict, who returns to Pip on a stormy night, and, along with that, is stunned that he is his benefactor, locking the door when he is asleep. His struggles and desires haven’t changed much, as he still wants to marry Estella and doesn’t really have a clear vision of what he wants to be, for he was told that he was “not designed for any profession, and that I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could ‘hold my own’ with the average of young men in prosperous circumstances” (p. 208).

Section II: Plot

After the events of Part I, Pip is now living under the roof of Herbert Pocket’s — the pale young gentleman — apartment at Barnard’s Hotel. He befriends him as well as the Pocket family, Wemmick, and Mr. Jaggers, albeit he’s quite apprehensive of the latter. Getting to tour around from the streets of London to Wemmick’s Castle to Mr. Jaggers’s house (where he meets Molly, the housekeeper), it’s not until Pip gets a letter from Biddy of Joe’s arriving that the story progresses. Joe comes to tell him of Estella, who came back to Satis House and wants to see him, along with Miss Havisham, which Pip is immediately excited about. Along the way, he has to share a coach with two convicts, one of them being the stranger who gave him money at the pub long ago. When he arrives at Satis House, Pip is stunned to see Orlick as the new porter, but he is later fired by Mr. Jaggers the next day when they both return to London. As for Estella, she is the same, more or less, except Pip thinks she has drastically changed her appearance, as she is more beautiful than ever. Later on, he receives a letter from her, desperate enough to wait long hours to see her, and escorts her to her new home at Richmond. Afterwards, Pip returns home and confesses his feelings of Joe and Biddy to Herbert, and the two record their debts, as they have been spending it more than they needed, until news came that Mrs. Joe Gargery had died. Back at home, he is really sad of her death and tries to rebuild his relationship with Joe and Biddy, but his attempts to the latter are nearly futile. On his twenty-first birthday, Pip fully becomes an adult and receives more money, and with it, anonymously gives half of it to Herbert so he can get his dream job. Nevertheless, Pip regularly visits Estella at Richmond, though her attitude doesn’t change, and the both of them go back to Satis House, where Pip sees a confrontation between Estella and Miss Haivsham in which the former cruelly treats her the same way she treats men. As the years go by, in one particular night, with a heavy storm going about, Pip hears of footsteps and invites a strange man, who is the convict Pip met early in life and who is still running from the law. Pip is surprised and shocked of the convict because he reveals that he is his benefactor, and the latter stays for the night.

Section III: Vocabulary

1) Portmanteau – noun – 1. a case or bag to carry clothing in while traveling, esp. a leather trunk or suitcase that opens in two halves: When he had got his shilling, and had course in time completed the ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to relieve his mind), I went to the front office with my little portmanteau in my hand and asked, was Mr. Jaggers home? (P. 172)

2) Bereavement – noun – 1. to deprive and make desolate, esp. by death: I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. (P. 180)

3) Magnanimous – adjective – 1. generous in forgiving an insult or injury; free from petty resentfulness or vindictiveness: ‘Well!’ said the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good-humouredly; ‘it’s all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you’ll forgive me for having knocked you about so.’ (P. 185)

4) Avaricious – adjective – 1. characterized by avarice; greedy; covetous: ‘I don’t take to it, Philip,’ said he, smiling, ‘for it sounds like a moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond, or so fat that he couldn’t see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to get a bird’s-nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the neighbourhood.’ (P. 188)

5) Vellum – noun – 1. calfskin, lambskin, kidskin, etc., treated for use as a writing surface: I believe he had been knighted himself for storming the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a desperate address engrossed in vellum, on the occasion of the laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for handing some royal personage either the trowel or the mortar. (P. 200)

6) Billeted – verb – 1. to obtain lodging, stay: Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of his face heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some minutes, as if he couldn’t make out how they came to be boarding and lodging in that establishment, and why they hadn’t been billeted by Nature on somebody else. (P. 206)

7) Acquiesced – verb – 1. at assent tacitly; submit or comply silently or without protest; agree; consent: I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to the contrary. (P. 208)

8) Amenities – noun – 1. an agreeable way or manner; courtesy; civility: Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities of life, I supposed he was very skillful? (P. 210)

9) Bijou – noun – 1. a jewel: They were all displayed in that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first inducted, and which served, not only as the general sitting-room but the kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack. (P. 221)

10) Gird – verb – 1. to encircle or bind with a belt or band: It was so with all of us, but with no one more than Drummle: the development of whose inclination to gird in a grudging and suspicious way at the rest, was screwed out of him before the fish was taken off. (P. 226)

Section IV: Victorian Era Research

During the nineteenth century, the theory of evolution forever changed the face of science and how we view the world. But what’s perhaps equally as fascinating as the theory itself is the man who thought of it: Charles Darwin. He was born on February 1809 unto a family who loved science, his grandfather Erasmus Darwin being a well-known scientist that tried to explore the far reaches of evolution himself. Becoming interested in natural history and collecting rocks and insects at an early age, Darwin’s groundbreaking discoveries began on the Galapagos Islands when he found many unique species that were only found  on the islands, which became the basis if his life’s work. He concluded that geographic separation made different species adapt to the new land area after careful examinations from his five-year voyage on the Beagle. Gathering his notes, he created the theory from his various observations and studies in 1838 and first revealed it to Joseph Hooker in 1844. However, it wasn’t until 1859 that he published it due to the heavy criticism of the book Vestiges of Creation on 1844, which challenged the Bible’s account of the creation of Earth, although he had already completed his geological series of books about his observations on the Galapagos Islands and other places thirteen years earlier. So on 1859, his controversial book On the Origin of Species was put in stores and flew off the shelf, all copies being oversubscribed (his follow-up book Descent of Man was published twelve years later). The public debated his theory constantly, the most famous being the 1860 Oxford University evolution debate, with religious people and creationists often disregarding it at the time. However, as of today, the book is seen as the groundwork for biology and evolution, influencing many other scientists in the years to follow, and his legacy still lives on today.

Stefoff, Rebecca. Charles Darwin and the Evolution Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1996

Section V: Poetic Devices

“It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in the streets,” (p. 333) is an example of imagery because it describes the weather in full detail that appeals to the senses. Charles Dickens’ use of imagery helps the reader understand and imagine what it feels like to be in the weather Pip was in. His use of the repetitiveness conveys an effect that aids in the description of the harshness of the weather, also. The paragraph would go on to specify it in even more vivid terms, emphasizing on the destruction the storm has caused. It additionally foreshadows an ominous becoming (later revealed to be the convict), which fits the mood of the chapter. Since the whole chapter takes place in the same night with the storm raging throughout, it creates a dark, threatening mood that sets the tone of the chapter. The convict’s presence helps to maintain the forebodingness of Pip’s future expectations as well as his fear. Similes can also be found in the chapter, like “. . . the coal fires in barges on the river were being carried away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain” (p. 334), which gives the reader a sense of how it’s like and what’s going on. All in all, poetic devices significantly contribute to the novel as a whole, as it boosts the quality of the work as well as make it a more enjoyable read.

Section VI: Lasting Impressions

“When I awoke, without having parted in my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the clocks of the Eastward churches were striking five, the candles were wasted out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the thick, black darkness.” (P. 345)

The above quote is important in that it foreshadows Pip’s expectations in the future. It might’ve revealed that Pip’s future is not going to be as light as it was in the beginning of Part II. I don’t think it speaks of any of the possible themes, as it’s just a description of the cold, hard night Pip is experiencing. The reason I liked it is because it’s like the feeling of anticipation of waiting a week or year after a TV episode or movie ends in a cliffhanger. However, I guess you can say almost all of his chapters end in cliffhangers since they were released episodically, but I still thought it was pretty cool. The quote also shows Pip’s apprehensiveness to the convict, whose mysterious return may play a huge part in Part III. I found it comparable to Lost or Heroes, because each show ends each of their episodes with cliffhangers that creates an air of anticipation for the next episode. There’s really no significance in it except that it serves as a transition to the next part. So overall, I think Dickens has nicely foreshadowed the ominous future of Pip and the convict’s reason of being there.