Summaries and Critical Commentary

Abstract

Pip Pirrip, the narrator of Great Expectations, lives on the marshes with his sister and brother-in-law, Joe Gargery, who is the village blacksmith, as his parents and other relations are all dead. One day when the seven-year-old Pip visits the churchyard where his parents and brothers are buried, an escaped convict seizes him, and threatens him with terrible consequences unless Pip gets him a file and some food, which the terrified boy steals from his sister and brother-in-law. Though the escaped convict is soon recaptured, Pip never forgets this early alarm or the way it made him steal from and deceive Joe and his sister.