How Does Pip Develop Throughout The Novel

In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, the most prominent observation that I made of the plot development is that Pip’s gradual loss of humanity made it increasingly difficult for me to empathize with him until such became almost impossible. To elaborate, in the beginning of the story, Pip is a timid and innocent young boy whom I view to be relatable and pitiable. However, the process of maturation quickly pollutes him with arrogance, shame, and financial aspiration. Not long after Dickens introduces Pip, he meets his love interest and the catalyst for his corruption, Estella. Her higher social class and disparagement of him causes Pip to become ashamed of his common life and aspire to escape it. Such aspiration is realized when he inherits

In the beginning of the story, he helps an escaped convict, the act of which he “knew to be wrong” but was “too cowardly to avoid doing,” then fails to “do what I knew what was right” and tell Joe the truth, which he is “too cowardly to do” (Dickens ). Such internal conflict provides transparency to Pip’s innocence as he struggles with morality. He is aware that telling Joe about the incident would morally correct but does not do so and, therefore, chooses moral transgression to protect his relationship with him. Pip fears even the slight possibility of hurting Joe or losing his trust, which, to me, shows that, at this point of the story, he is innocent and values human relations very highly. Consequently, I can personally relate to him by drawing upon my own childhood experience. However, such trait begins to disappear when he meets Estella. She makes him feel inadequate and insecure and ashamed of his common life, which is illustrated when he complains that if Joe “had been rather more genteelly brought up, I should have been so too” (). Estella, beyond her role as his love interest, represents aristocracy and by falling in love with her, he aspires for an aristocratic