Pip as a Sympathetic Character in Great Expectations
Can you imagine being totally in love with someone who is completely turned off by you? This is what happens to Pip. Throughout the book Estella disregards his feelings. In Great Expectations my sympathy for Pip fluctuates. Pip starts out as a sympathetic character because he is poor, his parents are dead, and he must live under Mrs. Joe's strict rules. As the story moves on, my sympathy for Pip decreases in every way except one: his relationship with Estella.
Ever since their first acquaintance, Pip has thought Estella to be the most beautiful girl alive. He changes when he gets around her. When Mrs. Havisham asks Pip about Estella, he answers with words like "proud," "pretty," and "insulting." Miss Havisham wants Pip to like Estella, and she tells Estella she can break his heart.
As the visits to Miss Havisham's increase, Pip realizes his feelings for Estella. He practically cannot live without her, but she treats him as a common boy. Pip wants more than anything to become uncommon so Estella might come to like him. He wants her to think of him as a person and not as an uneducated blacksmith apprentice. Estella begins to realize that Pip has feelings and taunts him by asking if he thinks she is pretty. A significant scene is when Estella questions Pip about herself and she slaps him. Then she teases him more and says why doesn't he cry again. Pip replies, "Because I'll never cry for you again," but he knows this is not true and says this "was, I suppose, a false declaration as ever was made, for I was inwardly crying for her then, and I know what I know of the pain she caused me afterwards" (94).
As the two characters grow up and mature and as Pip becomes a gentleman, Estella learns of the extent of Pip's feelings. She tells Pip she is to be married and says his pain should pass in no time, about a week. Pip then reveals every thought and feeling he has ever had for Estella over the years. The most important parts of his confession are in the beginning of the speech. Pip confesses, ". . . you are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. . . . you have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with" (391). Pip does not see Estella very much after she married. His heart is truly broken, but Estella does not have the best of marriages, depending on the ending.
Pip's feelings for Estella grow to their greatest limit. Estella hurts Pip's self-esteem and most importantly his feelings. Today, when someone hurts another's esteem, the relationship usually ends. In this case, Pip will always have feelings for Estella. He had hope, but Estella would not fall for him. Although Pip is not a sympathetic character in every aspect of the book, he is in this case because of the great pain Estella causes him and the suffering he goes through.
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