Wemmick's character analysis

Wemmick is a clerk at Mr. Jaggers’ office. In this book, we get introduced to Wemmick during the second stage of pip’s life, in page 157. Wemmick is a very important character in the story as he greatly helps the protagonist, pip after he goes to London. He is the person who gives pip the money allotted to him by his benefactor, whenever required and furnishes him with his basic needs. Interestingly Wemmick has two different distinct personalities. One surfaces when he is at his work place and the other when he is back at home.

Wemmic himself tells pip about this in page 192.

He says, ” The office is one thing and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me. ” At his work place we come across Wemmick as being very stern and unruffled. This characteristic in him can be seen in page 157, pip says, “We found a new set of people lingering out side, but Wemmick made a way among them by saying coolly yet decisively, ‘I tell you all, its no use; he (Mr.

Jaggers) wont have a word to say to one of you’ and we soon got clear of them and went on side by side.

” In the page 157 again, pip describes Wemmick, while at work as a, “dry man, rather short in stature, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull edged chisel.

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” Wemmick never seems to be bothered by the common din and the chaos around his workplace. He had an exceptionally calm disposition. This characteristic in him can be observed in page 158 where pip says, “he wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before him: walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing in the streets to claim his attention.

His mouth was such a post office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance and that he was not smiling at all. ” While this was the sterner, more coarse nature of Wemmick, back at home, he was much more concerned about various things and was very friendly. Wemmick’s ‘caring and concerned’ characteristic can be seen in page 238.

Talking about his father he tells pip, “He is in wonderful feather. He’ll be 82 next birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighbourhood shouldn’t complain and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure. ” This also goes to show how much he loved his father. Wemmick’s friendly nature surfaces when he at his home. This can be witnessed in page 192 where pip recalls, ” The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick devoted to showing me his collection of curiosities.

” And in page 193 he says, “wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him cleaning my boots. After that he fell to gardening and I saw him from my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged and nodding at him in the most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as supper and at half past 8 precisely we started for Little Britain. By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened into a post office again.

At last we got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat collar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property as if the Castle and the drawbridge and the arbor and the lake and the fountain and the Aged had all been blown into space together by the last discharge of the Stinger. ” Wemmick cared a lot for pip. Eventually he becomes a good friend and adviser to Pip. His importance in the story is truly realized in page 334, where he saves Pip’s life by sending him a note cautioning him not to go home.