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Description
Flashcards by Poppy Lovick, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Poppy Lovick
about 7 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| My convict looked round him for the first time, and saw me . . . I looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me, that I might try to assure him of my innocence. It was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended my intention, for he gave me a look that I did not understand, and it all passed in a moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have remembered his face ever afterwards as having been more attentive. | This quote from Chapter 5 describes Pip’s brief reunion with Magwitch after the latter has been captured by the police. Pip, who is always concerned with other people’s impressions of his behavior, is anxious for Magwitch to know that he is innocent—that he is not responsible for turning Magwitch in to the police. But when Magwitch looks at Pip, he seems to experience feelings that have nothing to do with Pip’s innocence or guilt, a look that Pip “did not understand” but which is the most “attentive” look Pip has ever received. This is an important moment of foreshadowing in the book, our first impression that Pip’s kindness has moved Magwitch to strong feelings of loyalty and love. It also an important moment of character development, our first glimpse of something in Magwitch’s character beyond the menace and bluster of his early scenes in the book. |
| “Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.” | Joe says these words to Pip as a farewell in Chapter 27, after their awkward meeting in London. Pip, now a gentleman, has been uncomfortably embarrassed by both Joe’s commonness and his own opulent lifestyle, and the unpretentious Joe has felt like a fish out of water in Pip’s sumptuous apartment. With this quote, Joe tells Pip that he does not blame him for the awkwardness of their meeting, but he chalks it up instead to the natural divisions of life. The blacksmith concocts a metaphor of metalsmithing to describe these natural divisions: some men are blacksmiths, such as Joe, and some men are goldsmiths, such as Pip. In these simple terms, Joe arrives at a wise and resigned attitude toward the changes in Pip’s social class that have driven them apart, and he shows his essential goodness and loyalty by blaming the division not on Pip but on the unalterable nature of the human condition. |
| “Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son—more to me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep till I half-forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see yourn. . . . I see you there a many times plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says each time—and I goes out in the open air to say it under the open heavens—‘but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings of yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat ’em!” | Magwitch makes this speech to Pip in Chapter 39, when he dramatically reveals himself as Pip’s secret benefactor and the source of all his wealth. This revelation is crucially important to the plot of the novel, as it collapses Pip’s idealistic view of wealth and social class by forcing him to realize that his own status as a gentleman is owed to the loyalty of a lower-class criminal. The quote is also important for what it reveals about Magwitch’s character: previously, the convict has seemed menacing, mysterious, and frightening; with this quote, we receive our first glimpse of his extraordinary inner nobility, manifested through the powerful sense of loyalty he feels toward Pip. |
| “Dear Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You understand what I say?” A gentle pressure on my hand. “You had a child once, whom you loved and lost.” A stronger pressure on my hand. “She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her!” | In this passage from Chapter 56, Pip tells the dying Magwitch about his daughter, Estella, whom he has not seen since she was a young girl. If the arrival of Magwitch collapses Pip’s idealistic view of the upper classes, then the subsequent revelation that Estella—Pip’s first ideal of wealth and beauty—is the daughter of the convict buries it for good. By consoling the dying Magwitch with the truth about Estella, Pip shows the extent to which he has matured and developed a new understanding of what matters in life. Rather than insisting on the idealistic hierarchy of social class that has been his guiding principle in life, Pip is now able to see hierarchy as superficial and an insufficient guide to character. Loyalty, love, and inner goodness are far more important than social designations, a fact that Pip explicitly recognizes by openly acknowledging the complications that have made his former view of the world impossible. |
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