In Pip, the reader sees several of the themes of the novel: obsession, desire, greed, guilt, ambition, wealth, and good and evil. Pip leaves his state of childish innocence and “grace” and descends into sin on his quest to gain his desires. He wants it all and he wants no costs. Yet Dickens does not make him totally bad, instead leaving the truly good qualities asleep underneath. They surface as his guilt over his snobbery to Joe and Biddy, over dragging Herbert into debt, and about trading Joe for a convict’s money. Even during his worst moments, Pip manages to show some good, as, for example, when he sets Herbert up in business. His road back to grace starts when Magwitch reveals himself as the source of Pip’s rise in social stature. The irony that the source of his gentility is from a creature more socially detestable than the uneducated Joe is not lost on Pip. It is the slap in the face that brings Pip out of the fantasy world he has been living in. His dream has suddenly been seen in the light of day, and now he knows what it has cost him.
The concepts of self-responsibility and the cost for choices made make up his lessons in the last part of the book. Nothing in life comes free and one must accept the consequences of the choices made. Dickens generously gives Pip four “father figures” in the book to model this for him. Joe makes his choice to stay with Mrs. Joe and show her more love than his mother had, fully accepting the cost of enduring her abuse. Jaggers chooses control and an emotionless life and accepts the cost of loneliness and alienation. Wemmick knows the only way to support himself, his father, and their home is to endure an emotionless job that could drive him crazy if he let it; he accepts responsibility by keeping his work and home life separate and knowingly accepts and pays the price for his actions. Magwitch knows the cost for seeing his “dear boy” is death, makes his choice to go to England anyway, and accepts the outcome. Pip learns from all of them that there are no free rides, that wealth does not guarantee freedom from consequences, and in the end he has to take responsibility for whatever he chooses.
