Great Expectations Metaphors and Similes Quotes

“Come here! You may kiss me, if you like.” I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth nothing.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 11. Pip has his first kiss with Estella, the girl he is besotted with. The intimate moment of connection is not quite what he expected. The peck on the cheek is offered by Estella in a cold and disinterested manner. It is his reward for beating an older boy in a fight, later revealed to be Herbert Pocket. In a simile, Pip likens the kiss to something transactional, like a worthless monetary tip you would give a common boy.

I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself or so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a worm.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 13. Joe’s awkwardness and embarrassment are evident when Miss Havisham questions him in Satis House, asking if he is the husband of the sister of the boy Pip. Joe is there to arrange or Pip’s apprenticeship, but feels terribly out of place in the upper class Gothic mansion. This is emphasized by Pip’s simile likening Joe to a ruffled bird with mouth open wanting a worm.

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify. Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it…I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 14. In the chapter’s opening lines, Pip confesses to being ashamed of his humble origins and simple life with Joe and Mrs. Joe. He no longer believes that Joe’s forge is his metaphorical “glowing road to manhood and independence.” Pip has been changed by the time he spent with upper class Miss Havisham and daughter Estella at Satis House, but not for the better. He now believes that being a blacksmith is beneath him, or “coarse and common,” and wants to follow a different career path. He is certainly correct when he admits that he is showing “black ingratitude” to Joe for all the love he has shown Pip. Foreshadowed in this passage is Pip’s future snobbery and social climbing.

There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 14. Pip goes through a dark period of depression while working with Joe as his apprentice. He is unhappy with blacksmithing and wants something more out of life. The simile of a thick curtain dropping down over his life describes how hopeless he feels. Pip’s dissatisfaction with the social class he feels trapped in, as well as his ambition to do better, are reflected here.

At those times, I would decide conclusively that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge was gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company with Biddy, – when all in a moment some confounding remembrance of the Havisham days would fall upon me like a destructive missile, and scatter my wits again… perhaps after all Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune when my time was out.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. At times Pip appears to embrace the working class life with its promise of a partnership at Joe’s forge and close relationship with Biddy. But his head is quickly turned by the lure of the wealthy life he remembers from his visits to the upper class Havisham mansion. This memory, he says in a simile, hits him “like a destructive missile.” He goes on to fantasize that Miss Havisham will make his fortune for him, which there is no evidence of. This is an example of self-deception on the part of Pip and his overactive imagination.

O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to, I see you again, with your muscular blacksmith’s arm before your eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying away. O dear good faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle of an angel’s wing!

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. Pip the narrator remembers the time he left Joe’s forge to train as a gentlemen and expresses remorse over the way he treated and forsook his friend. He describes Joe’s love and fidelity, using angelic imagery to emphasize Joe’s moral goodness. The older Pip recalls the tremble of Joe’s loving hand on his arm, comparing it in a simile to the “rustle of an angel’s wing.”

Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from Joe’s pipe floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe – not obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we shared together. I put my light out, and crept into bed; and it was an uneasy bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any more.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. As Pip goes to bed he watches the clouds of smoke from Joe’s pipe floating past his window. In a powerful simile, he imagines them to be a blessing from the good and almost saint-like Joe. The imagery and language evoke a sense of peace and family life and point to the close bond that Pip shares with Joe. But a discordant note is sounded when Pip personifies his bed as “uneasy” and says he cannot sleep easily anymore. Reflected here is Pip’s transition from a poor childhood to a more privileged adulthood, where the future troubles that will bring are foreshadowed.

As I passed the church, I felt…a sublime compassion for the poor creatures who were destined to go there, Sunday after Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie obscurely at last among the low green mounds. I promised myself that I would do something for them one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension upon everybody in the village.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. The metaphor of “a gallon of condescension” sums up perfectly Pip’s new feelings of superiority after learning that he has come into a large fortune. The superficiality of the upper classes is mocked by Dickens, when Pip describes his fellow villagers as “poor creatures” and says how he will be “bestowing a dinner” on them. It doesn’t take long for money to turn Pip into a snob and have him use the language of the condescending. That said, it does show Pip still retains a generous side to his nature by wanting to share his largesse with those he grew up with. A tone of irony is created by having Pip express these pompous and patronizing thoughts while passing the church.

Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively reeled back when she saw me so changed; her walnut-shell countenance likewise turned from brown to green and yellow.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. The metaphor of a “walnut-shell” to represent Sarah Pocket’s face is continuously used by Pip in the novel. The metaphorical language continues here with a description of how Sarah’s face color turns from brown to green to yellow, which it literally cannot do. This is meant to show how shocked her facial expression is.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried than before, – more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. When Pip leaves his home village for the first time to start a new life in London, he cries. In a metaphor he compares his tears softening his own hard heart to the way rain softens the dry earth. He feels nostalgic and sentimental about family and friends he is leaving behind, especially Joe and Biddy. His tears reveal his remorse for the ingratitude he has shown to them.

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. This is a description of Pip changing coaches on the journey to London where he looks forward to his great expectations of a new life. But we can read this also as a metaphor for Pip’s journey up the social class ladder as he outgrows rural village life and sets off to be a gentleman. The ubiquitous mist that covers his home area symbolizes his uncertainty about the future and his place in the world. As he travels further on from his home village the mist lifts, marking the ending of one chapter of Pip’s life and the beginning of another of fresh possibilities and potential.

Mr. Jaggers’s own high-backed chair was of deadly black horsehair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin…The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had a habit of backing up against the wall; the wall, especially opposite to Mr. Jaggers’s chair, being greasy with shoulders.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 20. Powerful imagery is used to describe the chair of influential London lawyer Mr. Jaggers and his association with matters of life and death. In a grim simile, the rows of brass nails around his chair are likened to those on a coffin. Jaggers presents an intimidating figure to clients, who seem to fear him as they back up against the wall leaving greasy shoulder marks there. The quote links to the theme of justice, crime and punishment. It reinforces Jaggers’s role as a powerful and successful figure in this world.

So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul’s bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate Prison.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 20. Pip is not impressed by the stench and filth of Smithfield Market, as denoted by his vivid imagery and use of a contamination metaphor that it “seemed to stick” to him. In an attempt to escape he turns onto another street, only to be confronted the sight of the grim Newgate Prison. Pip’s first encounter with London has left him with a negative view of the city.

His mouth was such a post-office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance, and that he was not smiling at all.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 21. Dickens uses a unique metaphor to humorously describe one of the features of his character’s face. In the book Wemmick’s mouth is compared to a post-office, emphasizing the rigidly controlled and unemotional nature to his character. Wemmick is clerk to the lawyer Jaggers.

“It is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Pip’s friend Herbert Pocket explains to him about Miss Havisham’s disastrous relationship with Compeyson, quoting his father Matthew Pocket about the conman. Truly good actions come from a good heart and Compeyson did not have a true manner or heart, he says. His father’s metaphor about varnish being unable to hide the grain of the wood is telling us that a person’s true nature cannot be faked.

I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and other instruments of self-destruction.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. Pip is at the home of the Pockets, where the woman of the house Mrs. Pocket is obsessed with social status and was reading a took about titles earlier. During dinner Pip is nervous that his working class manners might show through his clumsy use of the cutlery and glasses. So he makes a special effort when using these “instruments of self-destruction,” as he describes them in a clever metaphor.

“Good God!” cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate desperation. “Are infants to be nut-crackered into their tombs, and is nobody to save them?”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. An exasperated Matthew Pocket reacts to his inattentive and incompetent wife letting the baby on her lap play with a dangerous nutcracker. The dramatic and violent metaphorical image of babies being “nut-crackered into their tombs” highlights the parental neglect of the Pocket children. Mrs. Pocket, who is obsessed with social status, becomes so engrossed in a conversation about aristocratic titles, she forgets about the baby on her lap. Dickens is satirizing pretentious parents who prioritize social climbing over caring for their children.

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching – and crunching – on a dry hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 24. The simile comparing Wemmick’s eating pieces of hard dry biscuit to “posting” them into his “slit of a mouth,” says much about his character. The mechanical robotic way of eating, as if he was posting letters, suggests a detached, unemotional approach to work and life.

“I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades,” said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compliments. “Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 25. Pip visits Wemmick’s cottage at Walworth, which he calls “The Castle” and has modeled in the style of a small castle. Proud to show it off to Pip, he boasts of doing all the construction work himself. The metaphor of brushing the Newgate cobwebs away means that the cottage is his sanctuary after a tough day at the courts and Newgate Prison. Wemmick is the hard-working legal clerk who looks after Jaggers’s business affairs.

By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. At last, when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property as if the Castle and the drawbridge and the arbour and the lake and the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into space together by the last discharge of the Stinger.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 25. After having dinner at Wemmick’s miniature castle home, Pip walks with him to his work place in Little Britain. He humorously tells us how Wemmick’s manner completely changes as he nears his office. He uses a post-office metaphor to describe how Wemmick assumes the cold, business-like personality he preserves for work. At home a very different Wemmick is warm and tender, especially in caring for his elderly father, whom he refers to as “the Aged.” A simile compares his ability to switch from home-mode to Wemmick’s castle, drawbridge, fountain and father being blown into space by the last firing of the “Stinger” cannon.

He washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel, whenever he came in from a police-court or dismissed a client from his room.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 26. Pip finds lawyer Jaggers washing his hands with scented soap, a cleansing ritual he performs regularly. We are told through metaphor and simile that he is washing off his clients, like he was a doctor or dentist. Jaggers appears to want to cleanse himself of the sordid dealings of those he comes into contact with. The habitual hand cleaning is an allusion to the Bible passage description of Pontius Pilate washing his hands to show he was not responsible for the death of Jesus. It is also similar to Lady Macbeth repeatedly trying to wash the blood of murdered King Duncan from her hands.

In about a month after that, the Spider’s time with Mr. Pocket was up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he went home to the family hole.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 26. The last line of the chapter uses two metaphors to describe the character of the villainous and despicable Bentley Drummle. He is the “Spider” who has crawled back to the “family hole,” suggesting he behaves like some kind of tunneling animal. Drummle returns to his ancestral home and being heir to a baronetcy it is probably a grand mansion. But Pip’s depiction of it as a “hole” shows his deep distaste for the man. Foreshadowed in the phrase is Drummle’s less than noble death later in the story.

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird’s-nest with eggs in it, wouldn’t hear of parting with that piece of property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 27. When Joe Gargery visits Pip at his London home, Pip greets him and asks to take his hat. But Joe feels uncomfortable and out of place in Pip’s new place. Handling the hat awkwardly, a clever simile compares it to a bird’s nest with eggs in it.

I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would have been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper with him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 27. Joe is visiting Pip in London, where he feels uncomfortable and out of his comfort zone. Pip is annoyed by Joe’s awkward behavior, but realizes that he is at fault for the discomfort of his friend, whom he has neglected. The phrase “heaped coals of fire on my head” is a metaphor for Pip’s feelings of remorse over his own behavior towards Joe. Originating in the Bible it is to be found in Romans 12:20 and Proverbs 25:22. It refers to the act of showing kindness and generosity to an enemy or someone who has done you wrong.

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote cause of its firing may have been my consciousness that if I had known his errand, I should have given him more encouragement.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 27. Pip uses a fire metaphor to describe his embarrassment and awkwardness when his working-class friend Joe visits him in London. It is only when Joe gives Pip the message that Estella has returned to Satis House and wishes to see him, that Pip feels more kindly towards Joe. Reflected here are Pip’s feelings of guilt and shame over the yawning distance that has grown between them. Having abandoned his working class roots, Pip is aware of the growing gap between his newly acquired social class and Joe’s.

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Divisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 27. After their awkward reunion in London, Pip’s brother-in-law Joe says these farewell words to Pip. Pip was embarrassed at how common Joe was, while Joe was a fish out of water in Pip’s lavish apartment. As he takes his leave, Joe uses the metaphor of metalworking to explain how people are separated into different natural divisions, social classes and occupations. Some are blacksmiths, like Joe, and some are goldsmiths, like Pip who is becoming a gentleman. In Joe’s wise words about England’s class system, he recognizes the distance that has grown between Pip and himself. But it is something natural that must be accepted, he tells Pip.
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