Chapter 28 (Volume 2, Chapter 9) (Instalment 17):

Convicts outside the coach / Pumblechook, the founder of my fortunes!

Synopsis of Chapter 28 (Volume 2, Chapter 9) (Instalment 17)

Pip decides to leave for home (although he uses the neutral words ‘our town'). Aware that he has been cruel to Joe, he plans to stay at the forge but this good intention soon weakens and he stays at an inn. The older narrator makes a damning comment on his behaviour.

Two convicts are to travel on the coach, one of them the man who gave Pip the two one-pound notes in the Jolly Bargeman (see Chapter 10), although he does not seem to recognise Pip. Later, he hears the convict tell the story of the two one-pound notes. Pip's convict, who had so terrified him, has been sentenced to transportation to Australia for life. All the terrible fears of the early chapters return.

At the Blue Boar, he reads a ridiculous article in the local paper, which asserts that Mr. Pumblechook set Pip on the path to fortunes.

Commentary on Chapter 28 (Volume 2, Chapter 9) (Instalment 17)

it was almost too solemn … tailor's shop Pip runs through some young man's day-dreams about astonishing the folk back home, but knows that not everyone will respond in real life in the way he imagines them acting in his fantasy.

I should have liked to do … so despised. Pip seems to have more sensitivity towards the convicts' feelings than he had towards Joe's. He feels that the attitude of other people (including Herbert) towards them is wrong.

‘Would I find out … And I did.' This convict performs an act of self-denial. It seems that Pip's initial act of mercy has brought about other similar acts.

we record HIM as the Mentor of our young Telemachus In Greek mythology Telemachus was the son of Odysseus, and was guided through life by the goddess Athene in the form of Mentor, one of Odysseus's friends.

Quintin Matsys A painter who started life as a blacksmith.

VERB. SAP. Short for ‘verbum sapienti', a Latin phrase meaning ‘a word is enough to any wise man' - literaly, a word to the wise.

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