Flashback
For the
most part, the narrative of Great Expectations is flashback since
it is an adult Pip who retells his childhood and expectations to be a gentleman.
However, within the narrative, there are often times that Pip is reminded of the convict
in the graveyard. For instance, when Pip is on the coach from the Blue Boar in Chapter
XXVIII, and he overhears two convicts who are being transported, he is reminded of the
incident in the Jolly Bargemen as the one speaks of the two pound notes that Pip
received. After overhearing their dialogue, Pip thinks of the prison boat of long
ago:
In my
fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew waiting for them at the slime-washed
stairs,—again heard the gruff “Give way, you!” like an order to dogs—again saw the
wicked Noah's Ark lying out on the black
water.
In another instance,
in Chapter XXXII as Pip follows Wemmick on his visit to Newgate Prison, Pip senses his
continuing guilt and recalls the old convict,
I consumed the whole time in thinking 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; that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a
stain that was faded but not gone; that, in this new way it should pervade my fortune
and advancement.
in chapter
XXXVIII, Pip returns to Satis House with Estella to visit Miss Havisham and he
recalls,
As
I looked round at them, and at the pale gloom they made, and at the stopped clock, and
at the withered articles of bridal dress upon the table and the ground, and at her own
awful figure with its ghostly reflection thrown large by the fire upon the ceiling and
the wall, I saw in everything the construction that my mind had come to, repeated and
thrown back to
me.
Foreshadowing
In
this same Chapter XXXII, there is also foreshadowing as Pip ends with an ominous
question that foreshadows the return of Magwitch in his
life,
What
was the nameless shadow which again in that one instant had
passed?
Earlier examples of
foreshadowing of the return of Magwitch include the repeated allusions to the convict as
Pip in Chapter III feels the damp cold "that seemed rieted as the iron was rieted to the
leg of the man I was running to meet." The file that the stranger stirs at the Jolly
Bargeman in Chapter X, the man who gives Pip the two-pound notes foreshadows the fact
that Magwitch will be Pip's benefactor.
Miss Havisham's
wedding dress and strange behavior foreshadows that her history will be revealed, Pip's
feeling that Estella reminds him of someone he has seen foreshadows the revelation of
her parentage. Mr Jaggers's being a criminal lawyer and bringing Pip his "great
expectations" foreshadows the connection of Magwitch, and the storm on the Magwitch
appears on the steps of Barnard Inn also foreshadows his
appearance.
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