Them's fightin' words!

Thus far in Great Expectations we have had two unrelated fight scenes that are remarkably similar in a few key ways. The first of these, Pip's fistfight with the "pale young gentleman," takes place early on in his visits with Miss Havisham and the second, much later. Nevertheless, these two incidents share too many features to simply be coincidental to my mind. In both of these scenes, the aggressor had not been a key plot point or even mentioned prior to picking a fight and, in both Pip's fight and Joe's, he seems bent on starting a fight for the sake of fighting alone. Additionally, both fights, once over, are scarcely remembered, let alone spoken about.

These similarities, along with a few more superficial ones, for instance, that both the pale gentleman and Orlick end up with wounded noses, struck me. These two scenes are so similar to my mind that the differences that they do have stand out and highlight the growing rift between Pip and Joe. Joe fights for very solid reasons: his wife and his forge. After he has won his fight, he backs off and returns to his trade, completely unfazed by what had happened between him and Orlick. In sharp contrast, Pip is given no real reason to fight the pale gentleman other than that young man's insolence and general offensiveness and is convinced that he will suffer some great punishment for his actions.

Joe is so often called upon to be Pip's foil in the first section of Great Expectations that it isn't really surprising that his steady and grounded nature acts to contrast Pip's flights of fancy and moral turbulence. What I found particularly interesting, in light of our recent discussions, was that these two incidents that appear so parallel in the novel occur at completely different times in Pip's life. This connection illustrates, for me at least, one of the features of plot that greatly enhances the storyline itself.