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Deep Analysis of Great Expectations, Part One: Farewell to the Forge (Chapters 1-19) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-12-05 18:49:45
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

This video dives into the first part of Great Expectations.

Dickens has given us an emotional rollercoaster thus far, and it's only going to speed up.

We have met a troupe of quirky characters, learnt what drives our young Pip, and unwrapped many of Dickens' aesthetic gifts. 

There are timestamps indicating chapters and topics of discussion, so feel free to jump to anything that most interests you or we can make our way through the first nineteen chapters together.

Video Timestamps:

Chapters 1-2

  • 0:00 Meeting Joe and Mrs Joe
  • 1:00 characters & musical motifs
  • 4:50 pathetic fallacy 
  • 5:00 love and guilt 
  • 7:00 Marley from A Christmas Carol

Chapters 3-4

  • 8:50 dilating the Christmas period
  • 12:20 Wopsle & Pumblechook
  • 13:00 a terrific cliffhanger

Chapters 5-6

  • 14:00 "my convict"
  • 15:30 the heart of Joe Gargery
  • 17:00 Dickens the serial writer
  • 16:00 conscience and reflection
  • 20:40 reading and writing one’s life

Chapters 7-8

  • 23:00 Joe’s self-knowledge
  • 24:30 Dickens’ men and women
  • 32:00 the language of Pip vs Joe
  • 36:00 meeting Miss Havisham & Estella

Chapters 9-14

  • 43:30 Joe’s clothes, and the hero’s journey
  • 45:55 an elegy to home 
  • 47:00 my personal favourite passage
  • 47:30 Orlick as Pip’s double

Chapters 15-19

  • 49:00 Pip’s guilt over Mrs Joe’s attack
  • 50:45 Pip preparing to depart
  • 51:00 the experience of leaving home for the first time
  • 58:00 questions for you

Question to Consider:

What aspect of Great Expectations resonates with you the most so far? And why? Try to establish how Dickens is able to produce certain effects in you. 

Let us know your reaction to the first part of Great Expectations. Share anything that delights you, frights you, or excites you.

Happy reading!

Files

Previews only

Deep Analysis of Great Expectations: Farewell to the Forge (Chapters 1-19)

0:00 Meeting Joe and Mrs Joe 1:00 characters & musical motifs 4:50 pathetic fallacy 5:00 love and guilt 7:00 Marley from A Christmas Carol 8:50 dilating the Christmas period 12:20 Wopsle & Pumblechook 13:00 a terrific cliffhanger 14:00 "my convict" 15:30 the heart of Joe Gargery 17:00 Dickens the serial writer 16:00 conscience and reflection 20:40 reading and writing one’s life 23:00 Joe’s self-knowledge 24:30 Dickens’ men and women 32:00 the language of Pip vs Joe 36:00 meeting Miss Havisham & Estella 43:30 Joe’s clothes, and the hero’s journey 45:55 an elegy to home 47:00 my personal favourite passage 47:30 Orlick as Pip’s double 49:00 Pip’s guilt over Mrs Joe’s attack 50:45 Pip preparing to depart 51:00 the experience of leaving home for the first time 58:00 questions for you

Comments

Gonzalo Broto

Pip, you have made me laugh out loud with you (never at you), you have angered me and you have earned my pity and compassion, all at once. It’s a journey of constant discovery and growth the one I’m undergoing at your side, and it’s wonderful to witness your hesitations, musings, aspirations and failings. You are still young, but you have learnt a few important lessons already, and your plight has me totally invested and rooting for your success. I sympathized with your remorse at having robbed your own family, at having doubted Joe, at having lost your admiration for him, his position and his job, but I resented deeply the way you treated him when the time to part was nigh. How I loved Biddy when she reprimanded you in her subtle, delicate way about Joe’s pride and self-respect, something you had not considered in the slightest! Keep them both in mind as you go forward in life, for you won’t encounter many Miss Havishams or Estellas as pure of heart and devoted to you as they both were. You were taught some evil lessons, no doubt (only when you lied outright and exaggerated, your stories were heard, commended, divulged, while your simple truths and excuses were always discouraged “by hand”), so I can understand why you came to despise the “common” way of doing things and wanted to raise above that station, though Joe told it best: do not try to become uncommon through crooked ways, as that will lead you nowhere. Remember, vanity and flattery are slippery slopes, so do not give Mr Pumblechook credit for things that only exist in his−hollow−words. Being “common” shielded you against danger (you dealt admirably with the convict, with a temper far stronger than your years) yet it could not help you against love and ambition. I hope you will acquire new weapons to use against those two foes before they inflict in you irreparable pain. “It’s a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home”, is it not? I hope one day will come when you will cleanse this shame and learn to love home (common, lowly, and modest as it is) honestly and without reserve. Until then, I will trod alongside you and feel every pebble in your shoe as if it were gnawing at my own feet.

Gonzalo Broto
>>158340095

What a humorous novel it is! Now matter how dire the events might be at times, Dickens always wraps them in a veil of irony and humour that is delightful and made me laught out loud at times. One aspect that caught my attention is the idea of change, and how what matters is the present, the now, rather than the past. In ch. XIII Pip says, on being a blacksmith: “I had liked it once, but once was not now”, and in ch. XVIII Mr. Jaggers, upon first meeting Pip, tells him: “Never mind what you have always longed for […] If you long for it now, that’s enough”. Change is rapid in youth and it sweeps away long−held dreams and aspirations if a new fancy appears. I had a curious response to the dinner in ch. IV: While Pip was feeling a pungent sense of guilt at having robbed his own family, everyone at dinner was caricaturized, which, in my eyes, seemed to cleanse Pip of responsibility and keep him blameless, as if circumstances, rather than his own will, had dictated the shameful event.

Paula Baker

I am reading this marvelous novel 4 years after these posts but so enjoy all the comments. I appreciate how other readers' observations help me love GE even more. I know the story but this my first actual read and I'm listening to an outstanding audio version. I think Dickens' novels really come alive with a talented reader on audio! Dickens is one of my favorite authors. Pip, Joe and Biddy are stealing my heart. The gothic elements in Part 1 are awesome!!!

Alice

My favorite chapter is six, where Joe tells the story of how he met Mrs. Joe while he runs his poker through the fire. It reminds me of a night when I was a child and the power had gone out because of a summer thunderstorm and we sat in the dark in our living room surrounded by candles. My mother and father and sister and I sat around the dim light and eventually after speaking quietly for a while and asking questions, my parents told us the story of how they first met. I also relate so much to Pip’s internal change away from home. I feel so much the passage of time in the last few chapters and am reminded so incredibly powerfully of how I felt when I first left for college. Dickens is just so gifted at true sentimentality. Every time I read his works, I find myself welling up. Every year when I read The Christmas Carol, I swear, this time I won’t cry, after all, I know the story, and really, that Tiny Tim character is just so over the top. But Dickens succeeds every time.

Anonymous

The themes surrounding identity development in Great Expectations resonate deeply within my soul, as I'm sure they have touched many of you. As a sense of self is created, oftentimes humanity finds themselves caught in time, betwixt looking forward and backward. In this swirling current of the future and the past is where the reader finds oneself alongside Pip. In the beginning, Pip's context is limited to his born socioeconomic position. As his worldview expands, he wants more. Before meeting Miss Havisham and Estella, he had no concept of what could be, for apprenticing with Joe and living on the marshes was all that his imagination could render for his station in life. He is chained to his present circumstances like the convicts in the Hulk. His convict first exposes him to this symbolic liberation from circumstances via the file. As Miss Havisham enters his life, she becomes a potential symbolic file to his consciousness; he starts to wonder if perhaps his station can be expanded and allows his mind to drift as such, beginning to look forward and desiring to be uncommon. Estella becomes the external representation of this shame for his commonness. Pip even states, "Her contempt was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it." Pip's every thought soon becomes consumed with his dream of being brought up as a gentleman. However, he is caught between the world he is in and the world he wishes he were part of. This trapped state of time Pip is in is represented through his visits to Miss Havisham's. As Pip is at a crossroads between his present state and the one he wishes to find himself in, his continued visitations of Miss Havisham, who has nothing change from the clothes to the clocks to the cobwebs, is illustrative of Pip's internalized feelings of being stuck and hoping that with each visit, perhaps something will break him out of this frozen state which he visits. When this finally does occur, Pip is found saddened and reminiscing for what is and no longer will be. As Pip is about to leave, he places his hand on the finger-post at the end of the village and says, "Good-by O my dear, dear friend!". One's heart is taken aback at this, reminiscing on the universal journey of leaving home. All of humanity undertakes this at some point, and oftentimes, one finds a sense of nostalgia and longing for the simple nature of what once was. One can feel this even further for Pip as he deliberates getting off the coach and spending another evening at home; it's tempting to go back into the embrace of the familiar one last time.