Great Expectations | Themes and Characters
Philip Pirrip, known as Pip, is the story's central figure whose experiences symbolize the problems of growing up. Pip is reared by his unkind sister and her long-suffering husband Joe Gargery, the blacksmith to whom the boy is apprenticed. When Pip receives assistance from an unknown benefactor for his education as an English gentleman, he believes his patron to be Miss Havisham. He loves Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, Estella, and thinks the old woman is arranging for her to marry him. A revolution in his life occurs when Pip learns to his dismay that his benefactor is really the...
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