Great Expectations - lecture notes

• embodies typical childhood fantasies
• Pip counts on fantasies to happen (expects them)
• Pip - protagonist
• orphan; feels unwanted as a result
• reacts more intelligently and more sensitively than others might feel his age
• aware of being taken advantage of
• questions himself
• vulnerable; needs father figure
• wants someone to identify with; is looking for someone to embody
• Magwitch - “boogeyman” or “stranger”
• embodiment of a stranger; first encounter is at the graveyard (he is an escape convict)
• wickedness driven by the need to eat; “animal”
• threat of abandonment
• represents what Pip might become
• Miss Havisham - “sham” → fraud; double personality
• symbolizes: horrible decay and promise
• decadence of her home → memorialized by failed wedding (she was left at the altar by her fiancee)
• has kept everything in her house the way it was left during her failed wedding day
• decay represents lost
• wedding dress/wedding represents promise, family, future
• “Beggar your neighbor” - game Pip and Estella play
• Estella - adopted by Miss Havisham
• used as a revenge ploy; to scorn men
• “cold heart” to men, but Pip still becomes smitten
• echoes Cinderella
• Pip doesn’t describe Havisham and Estella as truthful to who they really are
• Father figure (two opposite sides of the pole): Joe and Jagger
• both similar - have power they hold, but don’t use
• Joe has strength - big guy, blacksmith, powerful (doesn’t ever use his strength to others)
• Jagger has knowledge - he has knowledge (blackmail); doesn’t tell
• “J” (both their names start with letter “j”) which is interchangeable with “I”
• Joe = all around nice guy; married Mrs. Joe (even though it wasn’t very economically safe) with Pip as a baggage
• took in Pip as an orphan
• even without monetary allowance, he is still happy with his life (which Pip sees as success because Joe is happy)
• Jagger = does everything for money