Injustice Finely Felt - Literature Essay Samples

In the first part of Dickens Great Expectations, Pip confesses to his readers that I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me (63). During Pips first visit to Satis House in Chapter Eight, he finds himself crying from brutal humiliation and explains to his readers that his sisters bringing him up by hand made him sensitive (63). He continues by explaining that in the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely felt, as injustice (63). His cry of injustice, however, does not leave him even when he grows. Though Pip is looking back on all these events and placing them in his narrative as an adult, his tone and language indicate a sense of bitterness. Although he has overcome his disappointments and failures by the end of the novel and is now looking back and retelling his story, he is still blaming his sisters bringing him up by hand as the cause for his vulnerabilities. This feeling of injustice has never left him within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice (63).From the very first lines of the novel the readers are given a depressing view of Pips childhood. The only thing that represents his parents is their tombstones. His five dead brothers, who gave up trying to get a living; exceedingly early in that universal struggle (3), illustrates the harshness of the world in which Pip grew up. Not knowing anything more about his family, Pip fantasizes about them; he imagines his father was a square, stout, dark man, with curly hair and his mother was freckled and sickly (3). As a deprived child he is forced to fantasize and imagine the world in various ways, and according to Hochman and Wachs, his discourse throughout [the novel] is shot through with imagery that powerfully refracts fantasy material characteristic of [his] early life (168). For instance, the sharp needles and pins jammed i nto the buttered bread Mrs. Joe fed both himself and Joe (10) in the first part of the novel were paralleled later on by the sharp handles of the nutcracker that might have poked out baby Pockets eyes (194). The file Pip had stolen from the forge reappears again in chapter ten as the stranger in the Jolly Bargemen stirred his rum-and-water with it (77). The Pockets childrens tumbling upside-down in Chapter Twenty Two echoes Pips being tilted upside-down by Magwitch in the very first chapter. Even Tickler the wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my [Pips] tickled frame (9), never leaves Pips mind; by the time of his sisters funeral in chapter thirty five Pip still remembers the Tickler (278).Guilt also never leaves Pip. According to Pip, his sister had always believed that he was a young offender whom an Accoucheur Policemen had taken upand delivered to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I [Pip] was always treated as if I had insist ed on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality (23). Mr. Wopsle and Mr. Pumblechook must also see Pip in this light as they discuss Mr. Wopsles pork sermon the gluttony of Swine is put before us, as an example to the youngwhat is detestable in a pig, is more detestable in a boy (27). For these reasons, it seems natural for Pip to feel so much guilt throughout the course of the novel.At the very start of the novel he is forced to steal food from the dreadful Mrs. Joe and steal the file from Joe. Because of this, he feels guilty in two different ways. First, his guilt for stealing from his sister takes the form of fear and, second, his stealing from Joe causes him to feel ashamed. The readers are given a vivid description of his internal struggles as Mr. Pumblechook takes a sip of tar water from the glass of what Mr. Pumblechook assumes to be brandy O heavens, it had come at last! I held tight to the leg of the table under the cloth, with both han ds, and awaited my fateI didnt know how I had done it, but I had murdered him somehow (28). Fortunately Pip was not caught by Mrs. Joe and Mr. Pumblechook recovered. However, just as Pip began to calm down and release the leg of the table, his nerves unraveled again as Mrs. Joe remembers to offer her guests the pork pie Pip had stolen (29). Later on in chapter 13 when Pip enters the Town Hall to be bounded as Joes apprentice, the crowd of people he encounters assumes he has committed some sort of crime. Even in London, Pip cannot escape Jaggerss pocket-handkerchief and waving finger, or the anxiety of housing a convict.In many situations Pips guilt occurs from his feeling contaminated by crime, tainted by his having helped a convict. While Pip, as a child, quivers at the sight of the prison ship by the marshland and describes it as a wicked Noahs ark (40), he also quivers at the sight of Newgate. For Pip, Newgate is a reminder of his childhood, and after visiting the prison with Wem mick in Chapter Thirty Two, he thinks to himself how strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening I should have first encountered it (264). Dickens himself also feels the same way about Newgate, and in his diary he explains that he has never lost his original feelings upon viewing the prison, to this hour I never pass the building without something like a shudder and have never outgrown the rugged walls (75).With respect to Hochman and Wachs, Pips present preservation of his infantile sense of the interpretation of his endless vulnerable self and the relentless invasive others and the vividness of his narrative shows that he has not triumphantly outgrown his orphan condition (170). Kincaid, on the other hand, believes that through the process of retelling his story Pip outgrows his victimized state by examining a passage from the novel:It was fine summer weather again, and as I walked along, the times when I was a little helpless creature, and my sister did not spare me, vividly returned. But they returned with a gentle tone upon them, that softened even the edge of Tickler. For now, the very breath of the beans and clover whispered to my heart that the day must come when it would be well for my memory of others walking in the sun shine should be softened as they thought of me.Kincaid points out that the passage starts off with a memory that defines Pip as a victim, but then it moves away from that quickly and moves towards forgiveness (41). Whether or not Kincaid or Hochman and Wachs are correct, it seemed necessary for Dickens to offer the narrative through Pips voice. Only through Pips voice can readers sympathize with the helpless, battered, abandoned child and it seems that Dickens is asking his readers to treat children with compassion for the quote written in Dickenss diary:In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever bri ngs them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice, (Great Expectations, 63; My Early Times, 77)is borrowed by Pip in the novel from Dickens himself.Works CitedDickens, Charles. My Early Times. Ed. Peter Rowland. London: Aurum Press, 1997.Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Charlotte Mitchell. New York: Penguin Classics, 1996.Hochman, Baruch and Ilja Wachs. Dickens: The Orphan Condition. Cranbury: Associated University Press, 1999.Kincaid, James R. Dickens and the Construction of the Child. Dickens and /the Children of The Empire. Ed. Wendy S. Jacobson. New York: Palgrave, 2000. 29-42.