H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e1 6 0smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and
stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered,
and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head
as he seized me by the chin.There is something animal or inhuman about this dreadful appari-
tion. Yet it is also the inhumanity of the purely human – of a man
stripped of the trappings of civilisation, who makes a naked appeal
to Pip’s own humanity. In responding to that summons, it is as
though the boy strikes a symbolic compact with all those who are
outcast and dispossessed. He also establishes a secret solidarity
with sin. In fact, it is not hard to read this hauntingly atmospheric
scene as a narrative of the Fall, though literally speaking Pip does
not so much fall as find himself turned head over heels by his
desperate companion. Magwitch will indeed go on to turn Pip’s
world upside down as the story unfolds. It is the child’s first
encounter with crime and hardship, and as such the staging of a
kind of original sin. All such scenes include a sense of guilt – of
being caught red- handed in some terrible transgression; and Pip
will soon be feeling this too, as he fears being punished for stealing
from his own home. In coming to Magwitch’s aid, he has fallen
from innocence, even if he has done so by an act of grace. He has
put himself outside the law, and however hard he tries will never be
able to climb back in.
For all its compassion for the underdog, the novel refuses to
idealise Magwitch. In fact, it leaves him open to some serious criti-
cism. He is, after all, the unwitting source of much of Pip’s trouble,
in bestowing on him a fortune which estranges him from the forge.
His generosity might well be seen as grotesquely misplaced. Pip,
after all, did not ask to be made a gentleman, however much he