Great Expectations · Chapter
Chapter III explained
On a damp, misty morning, Pip returns to the marshes to bring food and a file to the convict he met in the churchyard.
What happens
On a damp, misty morning, Pip returns to the marshes to bring food and a file to the convict he met in the churchyard. Along the way, he mistakes a second escaped convict for the first, but eventually finds the right man, who eats ravenously and anxiously. Pip learns that the second convict is the 'young man' the first convict spoke of, and the first convict becomes fiercely determined to hunt him down.
Themes in this chapter
Crime and Injustice
The chapter centers on Pip's complicity in aiding a fugitive convict, highlighting the harsh realities of crime and punishment.
Guilt and Redemption
Pip's guilty conscience is vividly portrayed as he imagines the landscape accusing him of theft, foreshadowing his moral journey.
Characters to notice
- Pip
Pip braves the misty marshes to bring food and a file to the convict, feeling guilty and fearful.
- Magwitch
The first convict is cold, hungry, and desperate; he eats voraciously and becomes enraged upon learning of the second convict.
- Compeyson
The second convict, mistaken by Pip for the first, is encountered on the marshes and flees into the mist.
Key passages
“I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket handkerchief.”
The dampness on Pip's window looked like tears from a crying goblin.
Pip's imaginative and guilty perspective colors the natural world.
“The gates and dikes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, 'A boy with somebody else's pork pie! Stop him!'”
The landscape seemed to accuse Pip of stealing the pork pie.
Pip's guilt makes him feel that even nature is condemning him.
“He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen.”
The convict ate everything together, pausing frequently to listen for danger.
The convict's furtive eating reveals his fear of recapture.