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Section 32 of 59
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Page 2 of 2
Chapter XXXII.
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Chapter XXXII. — Chapter XXXII.
Central question
How does Pip understand success now?
Main argument
Pip behaves like a gentleman in training, but Dickens keeps revealing the emptiness of mere performance. His...
AI Summary
Great Expectations
Section 32 of 59
Chapter XXXII. — Chapter XXXII.
Central question
How does Pip understand success now?
Main argument
Pip behaves like a gentleman in training, but Dickens keeps revealing the emptiness of mere performance. His expectations are socially legible but morally thin.
Key ideas
Display can replace substance.
Pip is more comfortable with surfaces than with truth.
Key takeaway
Pip’s new habits reveal the fragility of his identity.
of prison and crime ;
that ,
in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening ,
I should have first encountered it ;
that ,
it should have reappeared on two occasions ,
starting out like a stain that was faded but not gone ;
that ,
it should in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement .
While my mind was thus engaged ,
I thought of the beautiful young Estella,
proud and refined ,
coming towards me ,
and I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her .
I wished that Wemmick
had not met me ,
or that I had not yielded to him and gone with him ,
so that ,
of all days in the year on this day ,
I might not have had Newgate
in my breath and on my clothes .
I beat the prison dust off my feet as I sauntered to and fro ,
and I shook it out of my dress ,
and I exhaled its air from my lungs .
So contaminated did I feel ,
remembering who was coming ,
that the coach came quickly after all ,
and I was not yet free from the soiling consciousness of Mr . Wemmick’s
conservatory ,
when I saw her face at the coach window and her hand waving to me .
What was the nameless shadow which again in that one instant had passed ?
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