Great Expectations

The narrator, a young orphan named Philip Pirrip, explains how, as a small child unable to pronounce his own long name, he shortened it to "Pip" — the name that has stuck with him ever since. Having never seen his parents, who died when he was very young, Pip explains that his only impression of what they might have looked like comes from studying the shapes of the letters on their gravestones, alongside five small stone markers nearby for his five infant brothers, who also died very young. He lives with his short-tempered older sister, Mrs Joe Gargery, and her husband, the kindly village blacksmith.

One bleak, raw evening, as young Pip sits alone in the marshy churchyard near the river, reflecting on the graves of his family, he is suddenly seized by a frightening escaped convict, who springs up from among the gravestones. Dressed in coarse grey clothing, with a heavy iron shackle on one leg, no hat, broken shoes, and a face marked by exposure to mud, brambles, and stinging nettles, the man grabs Pip by the chin and threatens to cut his throat unless he stays silent. Terrified, Pip pleads for his life, and the man questions him roughly about his name, where he lives, and his family, before turning him upside down and searching his pockets, finding only a small piece of bread.

Learning that Pip's brother-in-law is the village blacksmith, the convict fixes on this detail meaningfully — since a blacksmith would have access to a file capable of cutting through his leg-iron. He then delivers Pip a series of terrifying threats and instructions, tilting him precariously backwards on a gravestone with each demand for added effect: Pip must secretly bring him a file and whatever food ("wittles") he can find, delivering both early the next morning to an old fortified position nearby known as the Battery. The convict warns that he is not acting alone — he claims a fearsome young companion is hiding nearby who has a terrifying ability to hunt down any boy who breaks his silence, no matter how well hidden, and would tear out that boy's heart and liver. Thoroughly frightened, Pip promises to do exactly as instructed and is made to swear an oath before the convict finally releases him and sends him running home.

As Pip hurries away, he glances back and watches the convict, still clutching his own shivering body for warmth, painfully make his way across the marshes, picking a careful path among nettles and half-hidden gravestones as though he fears the dead themselves might reach up and grab his ankles. In the fading evening light, the only two upright shapes visible across the flat, empty marshland are a distant beacon used to guide sailors and an old gibbet — the wooden structure once used to display the body of an executed pirate in chains. As the limping convict moves steadily toward this same gibbet, young Pip is struck by an eerie, unsettling thought: that the man himself almost seems like the resurrected pirate, returning at last to the very place where he was once hanged. Thoroughly unnerved by the thought, Pip turns and runs the rest of the way home without stopping once.