Great Expectations

15 Pages 3735 Words

Great Expectations: Father figures, mentors and patrons

Pip’s quest for identity is until the return of Magwitch, based on false values. In this quest he is influenced by (for good or for ill) a number of figures whom he regards almost as surrogable parents. Write an essay, which closely considers the role of each the role of each of the following father figures, mentors and patrons, evaluating their influences on Pip in terms of the novels themes. Use detailed reference to the text and brief relevant quotations to illustrate your observations.

Jaggers
Jaggers is Pip’s guardian, by the exiled Magwitch. He is a well-known barrister and his widely respected by everyone, criminals and “gentlemen”. He is a barrister, who will always try and get his clients off their sentence, using any means possible, even if they are illegal. He may use false witnesses and plant evidence to get his clients off the sentence. In this sense, he is no better than his clients and he knows this but he always tries to distance himself from the underground, poverty oppressed world that he ends up defending. He does this both mentally and physically, by washing his hands after speaking to a client, to almost wipe the problems of his clients away, sot that he can mentally picture himself taking the moral high ground. Morals- this is another interesting factor. There are no morals and each man has to be greedy to succeed. Jaggers is amoral and immoral at the same time, he knows that to succeed he has to cheat and fake witnesses, but he know what is right and wrong and good and evil. He knows that his actions are immoral, but society was not governed by morals at that time. He is also so careful to makes sure that no one can detect his corruption, in the language he uses,“use informed Pip, not told,” as so not to implicate himself and speak in an almost kind of code, in case of any people listening.

He said this when he was being supportive to...