Great Expectations Magwitch Character Analysis

In the coming-of-age novel, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens creates Pip, an orphan who finds himself with “great expectations” that dissolve and change throughout the story, allowing for Pip to also change as a person. The reader follows Pip as he goes through life, learning how to be a gentleman, (which is part of his expectations of life), loving Estella, Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, who will not love him back, and keeping a secret about helping an escaped convict when he was younger. As Pip continues to grow up, he keeps this secret, and once Pip and Magwitch, the ex-convict, meet again, he still keeps the secret. Originally, Pip kept this secret mostly for no one to discover how he helped Magwitch, however, he does, “divulge this …show more content…
Pip’s help with Magwitch by keeping him a secret reflects on how Pip’s character and how his expectations change throughout the novel. Near the end of the novel, Pip makes a decision to reveal the secret of him hiding Magwitch, which impacts the plot of the novel. After Pip tells Herbert the story about Magwitch, later, they make a plan to safety get Magwitch out in order for him to evade a death sentence if caught. While discussing the plan, Pip thinks, ”These precautions well understood by both of us, I went home,” (445). From the beginning of the novel, Pip kept the secret, originally because it was necessary or he would get in trouble with, say, Mrs. Joe or the police. But later, especially during the plan of helping Magwitch, Pip shows how far he changes from his younger self by stating that he realizes the risks to their plan, but is willing to go through with it anyways. Pip keeping the secret of helping Magwitch, reveals Pip’s character development as an arrogant gentleman to a more caring friend of Magwitch. The