Pip's Personality Change in Great Expectations

Pip's Personality Change in Great Expectations

Most people would assume that through age and maturation, a boy

with a wonderful heart and personality would further develop into a kind

hearted, considerate gentleman. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

provides his readers with an example of a boy who regresses in certain

aspects of his personality rather than progressing as one would expect.

Pip, a person who had loved and revered his uncle Joe as a child, while

maturing, finds that his perspective on life has shifted. This boy,

beginning life with a caring, generous heart, regresses becoming a

superficial, ungrateful man who is ashamed of what he had once been.

Pip and Biddy had become the best of friends and felt very strongly

towards each other. However, once Pip had been introduced to Estella, he

was overcome by her beauty, and would never again be able to look at Biddy,

without feeling critical towards her. Slowly, after coming into contact

with Estella, Pip was becoming superficial, as he was only interested in a

girl's appearance. Thinking of Biddy, Pip thought to himself, "She was not

beautiful--She was common and could not be like Estella..." (p 600)

Estella's beauty had made Pip blind as to what was really important in a

person. No matter how coldly Pip was treated by Estella, he went on loving

her only because of her astounding beauty.

As Pip progressed in life, he became increasingly ungrateful to the

people that had raised and cared for him as a child. His disrespect was

most strongly shown towards Joe. Having not seen Joe for a number of years,

Pip shows that he would rather have continued his now prosperous life

without having anything to do with Joe, when he thinks, "Let me confess

with what feeling I looked forward to Joe's coming... Not with pleasure

though I was bound to him by so many ties; no, with considerable

disturbance and some mortification." (p 630) Despite Joe's kindness and

caring, Pip remained unappreciative and ungrateful, for now Pip was wealthy

and did not care to have contact with a poor man.

Pip's most unfavorable quality was the fact that he was ashamed of

his past and his family. By now, the only thing Pip was interested in was