Characters Migrate

The epigraph to Mister Pip ‘characters migrate’ relates to both the protagonist Pip in Great Expectations and Matilda in Mister Pip. Throughout both novels these characters migrate physically from place to place, which initiates a cognitive migration in their values and attitudes. This migration presents the themes of family, honesty, hard work, imagination and religion to the reader.

At the start of Great Expectations Pip is a simple country boy of seven years, content with his status and future who knows no way of life other than his own. This changes when Pip visits Satis House for the first time and meets Estella who snubs him because of his working class ways. This physical migration to Satis House causes Pip to undergo a cognitive migration. When he returns home that day he thinks: “I wished Joe had been more genteelly brought up and then I should have been too.” Pip now longs to have a higher status and to be a gentleman. These first migrations position the reader to endorse the value of self-improvement and wish, along with Pip, for him to become a gentleman and win Estella.

Eventually Pip’s wishes come true when he least expects it. “My dream was out, my wild fancy was surpassed by a sober reality”. With his migration to London imminent Pip begins another cognitive migration, becoming proud, arrogant and condescending, even towards Joe and Biddy. Before leaving for London he says to Biddy “Joe is a good dear fellow-but he is rather backward in some things, for instance Biddy, in his learning and his manners.” Here Pip acts superior and judgemental of Joe, someone who he used to admire and emulate. This signals the migration of his values, from the ones Joe brought him up with, family, honesty and hard work, to the values of pride arrogance and status.

Pip’s physical migration to London to begin his career as a gentleman further develops his arrogance and he also becomes very extravagant and materialistic. “I soon contracted expensive habits and