Regarding Great Expectations

I just finished reading Great Expectations again. I haven't read it in about ten years. I find that I bring a different perspective to it this time around. The first time I read it I was about twenty, I thought Pip was a self-aggrandizing jack-ass. However, as I have aged and calmed down a bit I realize that he is very like every twenty-something man. I myself peaked  intellectually at about 19. If you had asked me then I would have told you exactly how unique, witty, and brilliant I thought I was. Believe me when I tell you that you are glad you didn't know me then, just thinking back on it makes me cringe.

So about this Pip and this book. Pip dreams of leaving the mundane life he foresees for himself as an apprentice smith, in order to become a gentleman and impress the girl. In essence working "by Hand" for a living, is shameful in the face of his icy princess Estelle's scorn. I worked by hand as an bound apprentice plumber just as Pip was a bound apprentice smith. There is honor and salt of the earth goodness in getting up at the ass-crack of dawn in order to do the things with your hands that are vital to the survival of the community. He had to shoe horses, mend implements, create tools, serve the forge fire, tend to his masters wishes, and in all ways serve. This was normally a formal arrangement between the Master of the forge and the parents of the apprentice. It created a near slave of the apprenticed. It is quite literally indentured servitude. 

In fact plumbers and electricians are America's last legal indentured servants. The knowledge is considered so valuable and important to the health and well-being of the community that it justifies enslaving the apprentice in order to ensure that the trade is passed on to a new generation. It is also astounding the number of little "tricks of the trade" masters posses that nothing but side by side work for years will impart even a small portion upon the apprentice. So even now vestigial portions of this system survive, in fact people vie for the honor of apprenticing under certain Masters (this is a formal rank like Captain or Admiral). I had to supply in depth background information,( akin to applying to collage) to a board of master plumbers, who chose from all the available candidates a certain number in compliance with the number legally allowed by the state(no kidding, there has to be a minimum ratio of Apprentices to Journeymen and Masters). 

Ok enough about apprentices, the fact of my apprenticeship connected me to Pip. Having passed through the age in life that he goes through also connects me to him. But further my wife is something like Mrs. Joe Gargery. Not Quite as violent but certainly as dissatisfied with life and as absolutely convinced that she is the sole victim of all life's ills.