Chapter Summary.

Chapter 2 of Great Expectations concluded with Pip having woken early on Christmas Day to steal some food and a file from home to give to the convict who threatened him the previous day (Chapter 1). Chapter 3 opens with Pip leaving the house with the provisions to meet the man at the battery on the marshes. It is a damp, frosty morning and the marshes are misty, obscuring his vision. Pip is wracked with guilt from stealing and imagines he is being judged by the animals he passes. Disorientated in the mist, Pip comes across a ditch he recognizes as being near the battery. There, he stumbles across a man dressed the same as the convict. Believing him to be the man he met yesterday Pip touches him on the shoulder, only to find it is a different man who hits out, unsuccessfully, before fleeing in the mist. Pip finds the battery and the convict waiting for him, ‘awfully cold‘ and looking ‘so awfully hungry‘. He gobbles the food down, as Pip pities his poor state. Pip tells the convict about the other man he met. The convict initially dismisses the other man, before quizzing Pip on his appearance. The convict rushes to remove the iron chain from his leg, asking Pip which way the other man went as he wants to ‘pull him down, like a bloodhound‘. With the convict angrily distracted by this news, Pip slips off into the mist, leaving the convict furiously filing away at his shackle.

Quotations.

Instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me.

Great Expectations (Chapter 3).

However fast I went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet.

Great Expectations (Chapter 3).

The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog.

Great Expectations (Chapter 3).

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to strike.

Great Expectations (Chapter 3).