The Journey to Manhood: Over the course of Great Expectations, Pip evolves.....

Over the course of Great Expectations, Pip learns lifelong lessons that result from guiltiness, humiliation, and over-confidence. He evolves from a young boy filled with innocence to a selfish, young man, and finally into a man who has true concern for others. Pip goes through three stages in the novel: shame and guilt, arrogance and self-indulgence; and finally his stage of redemption. When Pip encounters Estella and Miss Havisham he begins to feel ashamed of …

…He learned how to care for others and saw what he had all along- a man who loved him like a son, a man who was there through thick and thin. Joe Gargery was the same man at the end of the novel that he was in the beginning. Shame and guilt never took control of him; that is why he was able to save Pip and help him become the man he turned into.