Where is an epiphany in Great Expectations?
Years go by and Pip is still living the same wasteful life of a wealthy young man in the city. A rough sea-worn man of sixty comes to Pip’s home on a stormy night soon after Pip’s twenty-fourth birthday. Pip invites him in, treats him with courteous disdain, but then begins to recognize him as the convict that he fed in the marshes when he was a child. The man, Magwitch, reveals that he is Pip’s benefactor. Since the day that Pip helped him, he swore to himself that every cent he earned would go to Pip. “I’ve made a gentleman out of you,” the man exclaims. Pip is horrified. All of his expectations are demolished. There is no grand design by Miss Havisham to make Pip happy and rich, living in harmonious marriage to Estella.
