There are times in one’s life when people are in need of a friend, when life seems to be going nowhere and one feels alone in everything they do. In Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, Matilda is just in this place, with the island in conflict, and everyone is just struggling to survive there seems to be no hope, when Mr. Watts walks into the classroom with a great novel called Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Nobody, least of all Matilda, thought that a boy in 19th century England would have anything to do with her life, yet even in the beginning of the book Matilda finds that she becomes enchanted by the story of a young boy even though their worlds are far apart. With the help of Pip, she learned to understand a world to be completely different than her own. She is spoken to by a kid that never existed except in the fictional world in which he belongs to. Matilda had become so engrossed with this book that life seemed to fall into place when she heard those words “So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.” (Pg 1) The story she had come to love was more important to her then anything for it was something that had become more then just a story, but a real world with real people and something that could complete her shattered world, it was something more extraordinary than her own life on the small island. Finding something to believe in is more important than anything in the world, and Matilda had found this in the oddest of places, in a book and the growing imagination it takes to go into another world has overwhelmed the people in the novel. The great expectations of Matilda grew as she found that there was life outside of her own little island, and that learning of this boy who brought new meaning to her existence. Matilda was in great need of someone who would help her through all the pains in life, this someone came from a book, and despite all odds he became family and then she traveled in his shoes and walked in his path, in the end she found that she could do something that not even Pip could do, go home.
When Matilda feels the most alone in the world, Mr. Watts reached out to her imagination and opened her life to something beyond herself. “By the time Mr. Watts reached the end of Chapter one I felt like I had been spoken to by this boy Pip. This boy who I couldn’t see to touch but knew by ear. I had found a new friend. The surprising thing is where I had found him—not up a tree or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the hill streams, but in a book. No one had told us kids to look there for a friend. Or that you could slip inside the skin of another.” (P 23-24). When Mr. Watts walked into the classroom that day Matilda never would have expected that by the time Mr. Watts even finish chapter one she had found a friend, she had found someone that she could confide in that nobody could see, but her and she began to learn and grow along with Pip, going into his story that she had no idea how to relate too. Matilda began to slip on Pip’s skin and walk with him through the novel. He was not flesh and blood; he was someone that nobody could take away, someone that even in all the conflict was always there for her. Pip, became her rock in the hard place that she had needed all along without knowing it. Matilda finds that she can escape her own reality and dive into the world of this young boy trying to also get past his own circumstances.
As the book continues Matilda’s ability to confide in Pip, begins to be a concerning factor for her mother. “Now, I asked, where’s the value in knowing a few scattered and unreliable facts about dead relatives when you could know all there is to know about a made-up person such as Pip? She gave me a look of pure hate. She didn’t say anything at first. Maybe she was afraid if she opened her mouth too quickly all that would come out would be in anger. I waited for the slap. Instead she kicked out at the sand around Pip, then kicked out at the air over his name. “He isn’t a blood relative!” She yelled. Well, no Pip wasn’t a relative, I explained, but I felt closer to him than the names of those strangers she made me write in the sand.” (Pg 76) The fact that Pip means more to Matilda then their own history destroys Matilda’s mom and frustrates her to the point where Matilda’s mom starts to hate and punish Mr. Watts for bringing in a fictional character into her daughters life, this overwhelming feeling that she was losing her daughter, she starts isolating Matilda and her growing love in Pip and the story that grew to be so important to her. This overwhelming fact that Matilda knew something of the world that Matilda’s mother did not even know, Matilda’s mother could not understand why this stupid boy who was a lie could ever be important to her daughter, which in turn forced Matilda to turn to Pip more. Learning Pip’s story was more important to her than the stories that were told to her of real people that she never knew and never could feel like she could know people who will not help her learn about another world in a different country. Matilda’s love of Pip has become a strong bond, a bond that nobody really understood.
Through the experiences of leaving the island and growing to be an adult Matilda begins to realize that the book that had meant so much to her as a child has enabled her to grow and become the person that she is today she realizes that she had read Great Expectations in a different way, she felt as though she had actually been with Pip all those years ago walking down the roads of England. “From the town hall there was a short walk up the hill, and at some point I realized that we were taking the same route as Pip had on his way to visit Miss Havisham. The same route which was known to me, having walked it before as a besotted reader on an island on the other side of the world.” (Pg 254) As she sees the buildings and roads based on what Mr. Dickens used in the novel she realizes that it is not the same, yet she still feels as though she had walked on those very roads, feeling as though she was once again traveling to England. She again relives the experience that meant so much to her as child that helped her grow and find her life’s dream. She walked through the world in the eyes of Pip and now she made the pilgrimage to the place that meant so much to her, where she begins to realize that the Great Expectations she knew is different from everyone else’s, she has her own world that she could picture through her experiences and that the characters she had imagined in her book are the people she knew, the people on the island her imagination was so much better than the reality of the book for her.
Years later as a full adult she realizes that she has learned everything she really knows back from those days on the island and that her life is similar to Pip’s whether she knew it or not, she too left her home as pretty much an orphan to start her life as a lady when Pip left to be a gentlemen. She learned that although Pip was not perfect and as she read more the more imperfect he became. “In a worshipful silence I smiled at what else they didn’t know. Pip was my story, even if I was once a girl, and my face black as the shining night. Pip is my story, and in the next day I would try where Pip had failed. I would try to return home.” (Pg 256) Pip was her story she had a Mr. Dickens in Mr. Watts and she had been a part of a story all of her own. She also would find that she could finally overcome Pip, and go home, learning from her circumstances and being able to face the people and the place she left so many years ago. She decides that as she grew Pip remained the same, he became a little louder and his bad decisions became clearer and she learned that she needed to overcome her childhood imaginary friend, who had meant so much, because she no longer needed to follow slowly on his path. To be drawn into a book in this way is one of the most intriguing possibilities when reading a novel and it is an amazing experience to feel so into a book that the world seems to fade away and that her world and Pip’s world collided on that very first day and never parted, for Pip was going to forever be a part of her world.
Matilda learns through this great experience of living through Great Expectations and goes beyond the place that she began. Matilda had found a friend in the most strangest of places, Matilda learned and lived through Pip and his life only to realize that Pip is only different because he is written to be a fictional character, whose words that had meant so much to her in the end. She learned that even though Pip was a fictional character that when she needed a friend she had found one where she had least expected it. The expectations of Matilda only grew when she had found this strange friend in his strange place; she grew to understand that there is something more than reality. To be able to return to the place of all the terrible things that had happened in her life took great courage, she had seen things that many people would never be able to face again, yet Matilda gets the courage to do something that even her good friend Pip could not do. Matilda would not have gotten as far in her life if those that were flesh and blood had not helped her, yet even though she had grown she would never forget that she had found a friend in Pip, not in the trees or the streams, but in a novel of a fictional world, that had saved her so many years ago. The strength it took Matilda to follow her heart into the world of Pip, is admiring, for there were many obstacles in her way, her mother being one of the most important person in her life, before Mr. Watts came into her life, could very well let Matilda forget about her friend, Pip and Matilda’s life would have continued, but she never would have known the way a novel can make you feel like you are a part of the world you are reading about and that you too can live in it, in your own very special way.
All quotes are from Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.
First quote is from Dover edition of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
