How Does Pip Develop

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In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip is a character of many different perspectives because his life story is being told from his older self. At a young age, Pip is overrun by innocence such of that as every young child should have, but as he grows older his worldly view changes. He becomes ever more embarrassed of his background and longs to become a gentleman. His story and his character continually change through trials and tribulations and mold the final Pip that narrates this story. Charles Dickens does a splendid job illustrating the aging and conflicting tones of Pip's character through that of his innocent youth, his frustrated adolescence, and his final accepting older self. Pip, when he is young, can be described as a guilty character whose innocence only blinds him of his true surroundings. Initially, Pip describes that he is "ashamed" of home and that when is home that any "punishment may be well deserved" …show more content…

This is the state at which he narrates the book and reflects upon the wonders that has occurred during his life. As Pip reflects back onto his first day of working the apprenticeship with Joe, he takes comfort in the fact that he never put Joe down or insulted his line of work because of the way he had felt at the time. The older version of Pip has great respect for Joe unlike adolescent Pip, and he describes how it was through Joe that he found the strength to keep on pushing through the days with his sister. Pip recognizes that Joe was always full of goodness and joy and describes him as an "amiable honest-hearted duty-doing man" that influenced his older character in many ways that Pip knows not. Pip shows his wisdom and his acceptance as he reflects and brings back the significance that Joe had on his life saying that if any "good intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented

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