Loss Of Innocence In Great Expectations

Innocence can be defined as many things, but in the novel Great Expectations innocence is used to describe a lack of guile or corruption. The main character Pirrip Philip, telling the story from the perspective of an adult, and many times recalls back to his days where his innocence was still there, still pure. However as time goes on, children lose their innocence, and Pip is no exception. Dickens represents Pip’s loss of innocence through different settings in the novel. All of the settings represent a different type of innocence Pip loses throughout England, Joe’s Forge, and the Satis House. Dickens uses England to depict the theme of loss of innocence. When young Pip is told he will be going to England “[his] wild fancy was

As a young boy, Pip was supposed to “be apprenticed to Joe and until [he] could assume that dignity [he] was not to be what Mrs. Joe called ‘popeyed’” (Dickens 33). In the novel, Joe’s forge is at first, a place where Pip wants to work because of how much he looks up to Joe. The forge is appeared as a wonderful place, which is making Pip have childlike innocence. However, as the novel goes on, it is portrayed as more of a “job” which is already making Pip lose some of that innocence to begin with. After years of being apprenticed, Pip is feeling “ashamed of home” and how he “liked [Joe’s trade] once, but not now” (Dickens 82). Pip is slowly drifting away from the forge where his innocence once was and because it is a job to Pip, now more than ever, his innocence is drifting away like his passion for his job. In Pip’s life, “never has that curtain so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay… in the apprenticeship of Joe” (Dickens 83). Pip does not hate Joe, but the apprenticeship at the forge. His dislike for the forge is proving his astray from innocence, as the forge represents the innocence. Later, when Pip is in England, his “disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge [is] gone” (Dickens 103). Although rekindling some of the lost innocence, the overall distance Pip puts between himself and the forge is overpowering. So much so, that even when Pip realizes what

When Pip is first asked to come into the Satis House, “the passages were all dark and [Estella] left a burning candle there” (Dickens 43). In this setting, Estella portrays a major roll in Pip’s loss of innocence because of how vulnerable he is. The candle symbolizes Pip’s innocence burning bright in the Satis House, and because Estella was the one who put the candle there, she is the one to put it out. Pip, like the candle is vulnerable to the flame. When Pip returns from England, “Estella [looks] more bright and beautiful than before” (Dickens 187). This encounter in the Satis House represents how the candle is still burning bright with Pip’s innocence. Estella is molding the candle to make Pip’s innocence move as she wants it. However, as the novel goes on, Pip realizes the true intentions of being at the Satis House and how he “only suffered at the Satis House” (Dickens 254). As Pip is collecting his thoughts about the Satis House, the candle in the house is burned out because of how long it has been burning which effects Pip’s innocence. In Pip’s perspective, “it would have been so much better for [him] to have never entered, never to have seen” the dreaded Satis House(Dickens 280). Because Estella broke Pip’s heart, she also put the candle out. Now that her true intentions are revealed, that action destroyed the candle alongside his innocence for young love. The