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As the narrator and the protagonist of Great Expectations, Pip has two distinct identities. A speaker in the present and an actor in the past, his divided role creates narrative complexity. The two Pips separate and connect in a creative relationship that drives the novel. Tracing his development as it happens, Pip understands his story by telling it. The changes in self-understanding are reflected outward and seen, by both him and the reader, as changes in the characters around him. Thus, two contrasting ways of apprehending others are achieved in Great Expectations: first, the visual way, where others are perceived by their images, and, afterward, the verbal way, where they are experienced in their stories.
We meet the character Pip as a suffering orphan when he is five or six years old. Early on his child's mind houses an imagination intimidated by frightening appearances—he receives speech more in the impression it makes than in the meaning it holds. The result is a superficial (supra/facial) or sur/face mode of perception. As he grows up, Pip moves into the story mode of reception, where he listens as well as looks. Taking in the words with their overtones, he achieves more complicated integrations in his way of understanding others.
Like Pip, for this goes beyond a particular child-character to a wider human experience, we perceive others better when we receive their narratives, not limited to what we see, but open to what they say. Combining perception and reception, we