Pip narrates Great Expectations. Pip, whose full name is Philip Pirrip, is an orphaned boy who lives with his much-older sister and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Gargery. The novel opens on a scene in a graveyard, which is set in the marshes near a great prison barge. In the graveyard, Pip traces the letters of his dead parents’ names on their tombstones.

Suddenly, a starving, escaped convict appears, still wearing a leg iron. The convict turns young Pip upside down and threatens to kill him, demanding to know who he lives with. Pip reveals that he lives with the blacksmith, the convict orders him to steal food for him and bring him a file for his leg iron. He tells Pip to meet him the next morning, Christmas morning, at the old Battery nearby. Pip watches the man limp toward the river marsh. He sees a gibbet, or gallows, where the bodies of pirates had recently hung. Frightened by this spectacle, Pip runs home without stopping.

Pip’s sister guilts Pip about what a burden he is to her, constantly claiming she brought him up “by hand.” Contrary to her lofty self-perception, however, Pip’s sister is a rough-mannered woman who frequently beats him using a can, which she calls a “tickler.