Themes+and+Analysis

Multiple themes emerge in Lloyd Jones //Mister Pip//. The most notable is the conflict between the old and the new. Interwoven in his lessons on //Great Expectations// are presentations by the natives of the island. These speeches are shaded in antiquity, reinforcing traditional beliefs.

**Migration of Characters**
The epigraph to //Mister Pip// reads "characters migrate." It is attributed to [|Umberto Eco]. Characters migrate in literal and metaphorical ways. Pip travels beyond the confines of //Great Expectations// into the developing consciousness within Matilda, but Mr. Watts and Matilda also literally travel from one destination to another. This kind of exposure to other perspectives challenges the blockade of communication that was placed on the Bougainville residents during the civil war. This exchange of information brought on by a shared social consciousness educates the world in a way that was previously prohibited, but is absolutely necessary to the survival of a people.

Escapism
Throughout the novel we see the recurring theme of reading for escapism. Consider the following quotations from 23-35: "Mr. Watts had given us kids another world to spend the night in. We could escape to another place" (23). "I think Mr. Watts enjoyed the spoken parts. When he spoke them he became the voices. That's another thing that impressed us - for the time he was reading, Mr. Watts had a way of absenting himself. And we forgot all about him being there" (24). "We had no books. We had our minds and we had our memories, and according to Mr. Watts, that's all we needed" (27). "What I didn't know at the time was all of us kids were carrying installments of //Great Expectations// back to our families" (32). "She didn't want me to go deeper into that other world. She worried she would lose her Matilda to Victorian England" (35).

Education as Survival and Prevention
Consider the following quotation: The Bougainville residents are educated in many ways. Mr. Watts teaches the children about //Great Expectations//, but he also has the elders of the village come to the school in order to share their wisdom. Eventually, Mr. Watts combines the education of the children with Dickens's novel and the traditional beliefs of the village into a oral story, taking place over the course of many nights, with which he tries to calm the rebels who have infiltrated their village. The residents do not escape catastrophe, but education is irrevocably linked to their fate. H.G. Well's statement that history has become "more and more" a race with education on the one side, and catastrophe on the other, must be understood in our contemporary world in which catastrophe, whether it be genocide or an atomic bomb, can easily outpace the time it takes to educate anyone. If the fate of Matilda Laimo proves anything, Lloyd Jones is suggesting that education has become more a means to survive catastrophe than an instrument to prevent it.
 * //"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe//."** – H.G. Wells

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