As Pip sits with Joe at the Jolly Bargemen, a strange man watches Pip, then he stirs his drink with Joe's file which Pip profided the first convict on the marshes. As he leaves with Joe, Pip is handed something wrapped by the stranger. After arriving home, Pip discovers coins wrapped in the cloth given him. All these happenings disconcert Pip.
Then, in Chapter 16 after Pip has been to town to visit Estella, he walks home with Mr. Wopsle and the sinister Orlick; as they approach the cottage, cannon shots are fired, signaling an escaped prisoner. The house is filled with people because Mrs. Joe has been gravely injured by a tremendous blow to her head. The leg-irons are discovered, and Joe determines that they have been broken for some time. Pip now suspects the convict who stirred the rum with Joe's file, and at the sight of these symbols of prison, Pip...
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is ridden with guilt to think that he may be the cause of what has happened because of having provided his convict with the file to break his leg-irons.
It is interesting that the symbols of prison occur in various chapters, for Pip desires to escape the prison of his poverty and "commonness." He rushes to town to be with Estella and hopes that he can become more like those of her social class. Yet, when his family is endangered, Pip is remorseful. Dickens is subtlely foreshadowing occurrences to come and changes in Pip's character.
In these two chapters, the things that mysteriously reappear are both connected to the convict that Pip had helped back in the earliest part of the book.
In Chapter 10, Pip is at an inn with Mr. Wopsle and a stranger. The stranger is having a drink of rum and water and he is stirring with a file, of all things. Pip believed it was Joe's file, the one he had used to file off the convict's leg irons.
Speaking of leg irons, that is what comes back in Chapter 16. Mrs. Joe is found lying on the floor where she has been beaten senseless. Under her is found a convict's leg iron that has been filed apart.