6. Great Expectations (pg. 43)

6. Great Expectations (pg. 43): “Neither were my notions of the theological positions to which my Catechism bound me, at all accurate; for, I have a lively remembrance that I supposed my declaration that I was to “walk in the same all the days of my life,” laid me under an obligation always to go through the village from our house in one particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down by the wheelwright’s or up by the mill.”:
A Catechism is a book that contains the basic beliefs of the Church; in Dickens’ writing this would be the Anglican Church or the Church of England. Pip would have received religious instruction through the Catechism when he was young. Dickens references this book to illustrate how Pip takes his education from religious metaphors very literally and is unable to extend the lessons to practical life experience. Dickens also shows the dramatic changes in Pip’s character development from the beginning of the story to the end. Dickens shows the reader that Pip was naive and uneducated as a child. When Pip heads into his Expectations, religion plays less of a role in his life. Pip receives tutoring and becomes a gentleman, but he no longer makes references to religion as part of his education.

“The Catechism.” Anglicans Online. 15 April 2007. 23 December 2009. http://anglicansonline.org/basics/catechism.html.

"catechism." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 23 December 2009. Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/catechism.

“The Church of England (the Anglican Church).” The Victorian Web. 17 March 2000. 23 December 2009. http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/denom1.html