All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretense of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 28. The novel takes Pip on a long journey of self-deception and eventual self-discovery. Narrator of the story is the older Pip who is able to look back on his younger self and critically analyze his behavior and decisions. In this instance the social climbing Pip decides to return to his home town when he learns that Estella is looking for him. He debates whether to stay at his old home, but life in London has given him notions about himself. After making up excuses to justify staying at the Blue Boar instead of Joe’s forge, he realizes that he is a “self-swindler.” Pip is learning that he has been living a lie. He uses the powerful metaphor of forged coins and swindlers to emphasize how self-deception is the worst deception of all. Foreshadowed here is Pip’s future disenchantment with his “great expectations.”