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Sometimes Great Expectations 4 Friendship Sometimes in life you meet a person you want to be like. You idolize them, you work on becoming the person they are. Ever so often, the person you idolize ends up becoming your best friend. In Charles Dickens Great Expectations the characters Pip and Herbert display this kind of friendship. Is a special richness possible in a friendship when one person is working on being on the same level as another person? A friendship is based on four key elements: trust, loyalty, honesty, and making a connection.
Friendship in a way is like a marriage between two people. You share your soul, your secrets, you share your ups, downs, and arounds. You can t be yourself without your friends. Your friends, especially your one true best friend, helps you learn who you are. Some friends automatically click with eachother, other times friends have to grow to become as close as they can be. Sometimes friendships have the four key elements plus another factor that makes the bond between two people even greater.
Pip, the main character in Great Expectations, and Herbert, Pip s best friend, have a special bond. They share all four of the key elements. They trust eachother. Pip shares his secrets with Herbert. They are loyal to one another. Through everything that happens they stay best friends.
They are honest with one another. Part of the special bond between them is because of Pip s desire to be like Herbert and Herbert s dedication to helping Pip become a gentleman. Pip and Herbert have a teacher / student relationship and it s what works best for them. Pip and Herbert don t automatically start off being best friends.
Pip does however make a connection with Herbert at their first meeting in London. He says of Herbert, Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. (205) You can tell that Herbert takes an automatic liking to Pip by giving him his own special name, Handel. Kind of like a pet name for a lover. Except in this instance it s a pet name for a friend. Herbert is kind to Pip in every way when teaching him.
Herbert understands Pips desire to learn how to become a gentleman and he also understands that Pip doesn t want to feel stupid or inferior. Herbert shows his gentle way in this quote Let me introduce the topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to put the knife in the mouth-for fear of accidents-and that while the fork is reserved for that use, it is not put further in than necessary. It is scarcely worth mentioning, only it s as well to do as other people do. (207) Throughout the process of Pips becoming a gentleman, Pip and Herbert become closer and closer. They come to be almost as brothers. Pip confides everything into Herbert. For awhile in the novel Herbert is the only one who sees and understands the real Pip.
During the many years in the novel they stay best friends, even until the end of the end. Their relationship changes from a teacher / student friendship to a friendship of equality. But you wonder, if Pip and Herbert didn t have that extra spark to ignite their friendship, would they of turned out as close as they had?
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