Pip

Philip Pirrip, called Pip, is the protagonist and narrator in Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations (1861). He is amongst the most popular characters in English literature. Pip narrates his story many years after the events of the novel take place. The novel follows Pip's process from childhood innocence to adulthood. The financial and social rise of the protagonist is accompanied by an emotional and moral deterioration, which forces Pip to recognize his negative expectations in a new self-awareness. Characterization When the novel begins in the early 1800s, Philip is a seven-year-old orphan raised by his uncaring sister, "Mrs. Joe", who beats him regularly, and her husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith and Pip's best friend. He lives in the marsh area of Kent, England, twenty miles from the sea. Pip has no recollection of either of his parents; he is more than twenty years younger than his sister. Five brothers died in infancy between them: Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias and Roger. He is known to himself and to the world as Pip, because his "infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip". The opening scene of the novel shows Pip in a graveyard paying his respects to the graves of his parents and brothers. He says he is small for his age when he encounters the convicts at age seven, but when he is apprenticed to Joe, he is taller and becomes very strong to master the work of a blacksmith. Pip is destined for, and wants, a career as a blacksmith like his brother-in-law, until an unexpected chain of events thrusts him into a different social class. Pip goes through many changes in his personality as he is influenced by various characters. As the novel begins, he is an innocent young boy who does not mind his low rank in society. At around the age of eight, he meets a beautiful but proud girl named Estella who is of the upper class. Pip falls in love with her and becomes very ashamed of his humble background and his coarse-seeming relatives. When he is old enough he is bound apprentice to Joe. But he longs to be a gentleman, in a social class inaccessible to a village blacksmith. He suffers guilt for his ungrateful feelings toward Joe, who is a kind friend to him throughout his life.