The great director Elia Kazan said, "You have to remind people of their own struggles; it's a responsibility." Pip's story in Great Expectations reminds many readers of their own struggles, and from this reminder they share in the human experience and learn. If Pip does not endure struggle, he cannot grow. Those who experience nothing live only what Henry David Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation." However, the dynamic character of literature, who is a model of real people, must definitely endure conflict and effect change.
When Pip makes note of his "memorable day," he understands that he is going down a new road in his life. But, he fails to realize the importance and value of Joe's love until he experiences the friendship of Wemmick and witnesses the clerk's love for his aged father. After this experience, Pip chides himself:
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself.
Resolving to be a better person, Pip helps his friend Herbert by procuring a position for him in Clarriker's House. He notes,
I did really cry in good earnest when I went to bed, to think that my expectations had done some good to somebody.
His solicitiousness toward Miss Havisham does, also, redeem Pip. His own disappointments and heartbreak he perceives in the desolate Miss Havisham who begs him to write, "I forgive her." Returning his love to Joe at last, Pip, too, begs forgiveness; the loving Joe makes light of this apology, "...you and me was ever friends."
As Elia Kazan also said, "No one ever becomes anything worthwhile without having struggled." After all, one's happiness is in direct proportion to one's experience of sorrow. Having encountered conflict and disappointment in love and life, it is a wiser Pip, with a greater capacity for happiness, who enters the last chapter of Dickens's bildungsroman.
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