Summary
Seven-year-old Pip walks through a churchyard on a cold, gray day before Christmas, visiting the graves of his parents. He lives in the marsh area of Kent where the River Thames meets the sea. Orphaned as a baby, he lives with his sister, Georgiana, who is twenty years older than he, and her husband, Joe Gargery, the village blacksmith. Suddenly a convict "with a great iron on his leg" confronts him. The convict has escaped from the nearby prison ships called the Hulks. After turning Pip upside down and finding only a piece of bread, the starving man threatens to eat his fat cheeks. Learning that Pip lives with a blacksmith, he agrees to let Pip live as long as he returns the next morning with some "wittles" and a file from Joe's forge. To further ensure Pip's help, the convict tells him there is a young man with him who will eat his heart and liver if he fails to return. Pip agrees to help and then watches the man stumble away.
Pip returns to his home and is warned by Joe that his sister is on a ram-page [rampage] looking for him. She returns a short time later and lets him have it on the backside with the "Tickler," a wax-tipped cane. She has "brought him up by hand," something that gains her respect from all the neighbors, and Pip notices she is quick to use the hand on him and Joe. At supper, Pip slips his bread in his pants leg to save it for the convict. Joe, concerned that Pip has swallowed the bread whole and might choke, expresses his worry. Mrs. Joe responds by pounding Joe's head against the wall and calling him a great stuck pig, then pouring Tar-water down both Pip's and Joe's throats. Later that night, they hear guns from the prison ship firing, announcing the escape of another convict.
Unable to sleep, Pip gets up early to steal the food and file, and then sets out to deliver them. He runs into a second convict and assumes him to be the young man who eats boys' livers. Running in terror, Pip finds "his" convict. While watching the man devour the food, Pip expresses concern about not leaving enough food for the young man who is waiting. The convict realizes he is not alone on the marshes, and suspecting it is an enemy of his, starts madly filing his leg iron while Pip escapes.
Analysis
Dickens gets right to the action. Within the first few paragraphs, he has introduced the main character, Pip, conveyed that the story is being told in first person by Pip when he is older, given the location of the story, revealed that Pip is an orphan with five dead brothers, and introduced the conflict: a convict in need of help. The choice of the retrospective first-person narrator is effective because the reader immediately feels part of an intimate and confessional conversation.
Description is one of Dickens' strengths and weaknesses, as seen in the quote describing the convict: " . . . a man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin." It is rich with detail, creating a crisp vision of the man, and it is overloaded with detail, making the reader wonder if Dickens will ever stop. Yet there is no question he has a gift for bringing the reader right into the place, in this case " . . . a bleak place overgrown with nettles . . . dark flat wilderness . . . intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it."
Dickens establishes unique characters immediately, as well. Pip is "the small bundle of shivers." The convict's feelings as he stumbles through the graveyard, come across clearly: " . . . he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in." With the convict's use of w's in his words — (wittles instead of vittles) and the convict's eating style (similar to that of a large dog snapping up mouthfuls and watching for danger), Dickens defines the convict's social class, education level, current life situation, as well as his feelings about that. The description of Mrs. Gargery (Mrs. Joe) as having a heavy hand that she uses much on Pip and her husband, as well as Pip's description of his sister's method of buttering his bread and getting pins from her bib stuck in the bread, tell a great deal about her nature, how her marriage works, and what Pip thinks of her, too.
In these first three chapters, the reader also sees reoccurring character tags and repeating elements that further cement the characters in the readers' heads: Mrs. Joe constantly tells Pip about "being brought up by hand"; Joe refers to Pip as "old chap," and uses w's in words like "conwict"; the convict has an unusual clicking in his throat, and there is the recurring image of the iron shackle on his leg. (These repetitions were necessary because the story was published in weekly installments and readers may not have remembered the characters without such clues.)
The relationships are quickly established: Pip's sister rules the house, beats both her husband and brother, and is insecure and wants to be thought of as irreplaceable; while Pip views Joe, his brother-in-law, as a best friend, fellow-sufferer, and a larger species of child. The two males survive by having fun rituals such as comparing who has eaten more of his bread first and using silent signals to communicate with each other when Mrs. Joe rampages.
Pip's relationship with the convict is noteworthy. In spite of being terrorized, Pip also feels a fascination and bond with the man. He is attracted and repulsed at the same time. Instead of running away the moment the convict first turns to leave him in the graveyard, Pip stays and watches the man struggle away. This foreshadows the similar struggle in Chapter 39, when the convict returns to his life and Pip is both repulsed and concerned for his safety. There is a bond between these two. They are both — child and convict — at the mercy and control of others and as such, are both victims in life. Pip naturally responds to another "victim" and helps him, and this is the element to which the convict responds when he later rewards Pip for his kindness.
These chapters introduce several themes: right and wrong, good and evil, justice and guilt. Pip struggles with the wrong of stealing for a convict and the good of caring for a suffering human being. He also feels guilty for just being alive. From infancy, his sister has never let him forget he owes his existence to her; he is saturated with this guilt.
Dickens is careful to tie up his details, such as the threat of the young man who eats boys' livers. By having Pip discover the second convict and then remind the first one to leave enough food for the young man, Dickens introduces the conflict between the two convicts. The problem of the second convict is foreshadowed even before Pip finds him, when the guns go off the night before, announcing the second escape from the ships.
Humor and satire are important tools in these chapters, as well. Pip, for example, always calls his parents by the only names he knows: "Philip Pirrip, late of this parish" and "also Georgiana, wife of the above." His deceased brothers are described as "the five little stone lozenges." Even Pip's politeness to the convict, requesting to be held right-side up and expressing delight that the convict enjoys the stolen food, are funny. A bit of satire shows up when the stick used to beat Pip is referred to as the "Tickler."
Glossary
Franks and Frisians Germanic tribes united in opposition to the Geats.
Hugas a Frisian subgroup or family.
Hetware joined with the Franks against Hygelac.
Merovingian pertaining to the Franks.
Ravenswood site (in Sweden) of major battle between Geats and Swedes.
swathe to wrap with bandages.
Eofor and Wulf fought Swedes' King Ongentheow to his death. For a chronology of the Geats' feuds, see Chickering, pp. 361–62.
