Saturday, March 15, 2014

What is Pip's impression of Mr. Jaggers in chapter 20?Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

When Pip arrives in London, he encounters dirt and noise
and ugliness, certainly a rather disappointing beginning for his "great expectations" of
becoming a gentleman in this city.  After the coachman, who is fearful of Mr. Jaggers
himself, directs Pip to the office of Mr. Jaggers.  However, when Pip enters, the clerk
says that Mr. Jaggeers is yet out.  Pip, then, enters a rather dismal office with broken
skylights, and looks around the room that has Jaggers's black horsehair chair "with rows
of brass nails round it, like a coffin" and two death masks on a shelf. But, after a
time, he tells the clerk he will step out to walk around while he waits.  There, Pip
hears a rather sordid-looking group speak of Mr. Jaggers, with one saying, "Jaggers
would do it if it was to be done."  Hearing this, Pip is impressed with the prowess that
the lawyer seems to possess.  More and more people gather, one
declaring,


readability="7">

"Jaggers is for him, 'Melia, and what more
could you
have?”



At last, Pip sees Mr.
Jaggers as he returns to Little Britain and Jaggers's office.  Mr. Jaggers walks through
the crowd like a ruler as he addresses his followers, telling them brusquely, "Now, I
have nothing to say to you!"  Then, he asks them if they have paid
Wemmick.  As one little ethnic man kisses his coat and begs to be considered, Jaggers
tells him, "You're too late.....I am over the way."  Observing all this, Pip learns of
the power over people's lives that Mr. Jaggers wields.  When he enters the office with
Mr. Jaggers, and a man tells Mr. Jaggers more than he wishes to know, the clerk calls
the man "Spooney!" in a warning tone. Pip remarks,


readability="9">

I called to mind that the clerk had the same air
of knowing something to everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how
many other clerks there were upstairs, and whether they all claimed to have the same
detrimental mastery of their
fellow-creatures.



Pip is
amazed at the power that Mr. Jaggers seems to possess over his clients whom he addresses
as "blundering buffoons" while pushing others aside or threatening to not help them.
However, much like his first meeting of Mr. Jaggers when he was a boy at Satis House,
there is something rather sinister about Mr. Jaggers, as well.  As he informs Pip of
where he will live, who will teach him, how much of a stipend he will receive, Mr.
Jaggers also informs Pip,


readability="6">

Of course you'll go wrong somehow, but that's no
fault of mine.”



So, it is a
rather daunted, although impressed, Pip who leaves for Barnard
Inn.

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