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Great Expectations Contrasting Regions Quotes Page 3
Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
- Pip
- >
But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The very first words I heard them interchange as I became conscious were the words of my own thought, "Two One Pound notes." (2.28.20)
We readers never get to see what lies between Kent and London, even though Pip makes this exact journey like ten million times. There is something primordial or mist-ical (hehe…pun intended) about the journey between each region. If the landscape of marsh country represents or reflects Pip’s inner monologue, then the journey from London to Kent, replete with mistiness and all, is perhaps a journey into a state of self-reflection. In this moment, we see how Pip’s thoughts are articulated in the convicts’ real-time conversation. In the marsh country, there seems to be less of a division between internal life and external reality.
- Pip
- >
I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, like the old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which had subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the mists were solemnly rising, and when I laid my hand upon the village finger-post, smote upon my heart again. There was silence between us for a little while. (2.30.41)
Here, we see a direct connection between the marsh mists and Pip’s emotions, as well as his ability to see more clearly and to feel deeply.
"However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to?" (2.32.5)
Wemmick feels so strongly the division and distinction between London and Walworth that he won’t even talk about the people, places, and ideas that fill his personal life, thus making it as though these things do not exist. Pip and Wemmick are similar in that each man’s home is very different from his life in London. However, while Pip rejects his home in the name of London, Wemmick finds a way to make both coexist – he denies the existence of the other when he is immersed in a particular world.
