Great Expectations: God's Law vs. Human Law
In his book Great Expectations, the problematic nature of moral judgement and justice that stems from a conflict between God's law and human law is one of several topical themes that Charles Dickens addresses. This paradox regularly surfaces in his treatment of plot and setting, and is more subtlety illustrated in his use of character. To facilitate the reader's awareness of such a conflict, the narrator often uses language that has Christian connotations when relating his thoughts and when giving descriptions of the environment, characters and events that take place. While these things allude to divine and moral law, the story itself revolves around crime and criminals, thereby bringing issues of human law into focus.
The climate for this theme is established from the very beginning of the novel. Pip's act of Christian charity towards the convict can also be considered a serious crime. The story opens in a churchyard where the grave, symbolic of eternal judgement can be contrasted with the nearby gallows, symbolizing human punishment. Set on the eve in which we commemorate the birth of Christianity, an institution based on charity and love, Pip feels guilty for bringing food to a starving fellow human. Pip must steal food from his own family to help Magwitch, thereby transforming mercy and compassion into crimes.
As Pip is running home, he looks back at the convict and sees him limping towards the gallows "...as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back up again" (27). This imagery conveys a complicated perception of guilt as something conscious of its own moral accountability, frightening and self-destructive. When Magwitch is caught, he gives a false confession to stealing the food from the Gargery's to protect Pip. Joe replies that he wouldn't want him to starve and that he was welcome to it. Pip highlights the conflict between divine and human law by comparing the Hulk that his convict is returned to as "a wicked Noah's ark" (56). Thus in these first few chapters, the ideals of justice, mercy, law, and punishment are intermingled and confused.
This confusion is furthered by Mrs. Joe, who actually transforms charity into punishment. Her beatings, bullying and lectures of how she brought Pip up
"by hand" at great personal sacrifice are a constant reminder ...
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...er. In one short episode, Pip has described himself as a penitent, a prisoner, and a confessed wrongdoer.
The conflict between Pip's own instincts regarding morality and conventional perceptions of justice and punishment is manifested as the guilt he is burdened with throughout his childhood and young adult life. Pip accumulates these feelings and attempts to suppress them throughout most of the story. At one point the narrator takes a moment to reflect on his guilty conscience:
As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. Their influence on my own character, I disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all good. I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to Joe. My conscience was not by any means comfortable about Biddy. (256) He goes into great debt in his attempts to distract himself from this guilt, and drags his dear friend Herbert along with him (which he also expresses guilt about). His vain attempt to make reparations with his conscience by sending "a penitential codfish and a barrel of oysters
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