The Great Expectations of Matilda: The Gains of Losing
Stuck on an island, no electricity, no plumbing, nothing at all. The common question posed in this situation asks: if only one thing or one person could be taken along, what would it be? Maybe photographs, a lover, music, or a book? In Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip, there is no one item rule, but Mr. Watts, the only white man on an island in the middle of war, chooses to share one thing as the makeshift teacher. He introduces the children to the characters and lifestyle in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. One student in particular, Matilda, bonds with the literary characters and with Mr. Watts. With the help of these new friends, Matilda discovers her own great expectations through the gains and loses in her life.
Mr. Watts is the first to verbalize to Matilda how losing and gaining things affect a person. “There are some things you never expect to lose, things you think will forever be part of you, even if it is only a toenail. […] You gain as you lose, and vice versa.” (Jones 69) Matilda has spent part of her young life losing everything she had to the redskins, but now Mr. Watts was showing her that when something is lost, something else is gained. Matilda lost her father to another country and the material items that make life easier, but she gained a teacher and through that teacher she gained a friend, Pip, as well as the importance of the journey literature can take her on. In Great Expectations, Pip is also someone that has lost and gained throughout his life, he lost his family, but gained a handsome piece of property. Each person has different gains and different losses, but there are lessons learned through each one.
Back on the hypothetical island, all alone with one item, after some time that one item turns into hundreds of the same thing. Each one has a personality and dances to its own drum. Is this reality or a fragment of the imagination? Wait, imagination. This island floating in the middle of nowhere not only has a person and their special item it also has an imagination. Mr. Watts explained to his class, “'We have all lost our possessions and many of us our home,’ he said. ’But these losses, severe though they may seem, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations.’” (Jones 123) With absolutely nothing, Mr. Watts is teaching that life can be difficult, things, items may be lost, but no on can take an imagination. Despite the mind being prone to diseases, such as Alzheimer and Schizophrenia, it is still the individual’s mind. Mr. Watts’ wife, Grace, was “crazy” but all she wanted was to stay in the acting role of the Queen of Sheba, and her imagination let her do that. No one can take the dreams of an imagination.
Ultimately Matilda physically escapes from the island, but she had escaped emotionally long before.
People sometimes as me ‘Why Dickens?’ which I always take to be a gentle rebuke. I point to the one book that supplied me with another world at a time when it was desperately needed. It gave me a friend in Pip. It taught me you can slip under the skin of another just as easily as your own, even when that skin is white and belongs to a boy alive in Dickens’ England. Now, if that isn’t an act of magic I don’t know what it. (Jones 231)
Through Mr. Watts reading Great Expectations, Matilda was taken away from the hardships she was living with. Although she did not just escape from her world, another enchanted her. Her imagination was soaring with what Dickens’ England was like, with what Pip was like. She was off in another world that did not involve war or the pain of losing her mother and teacher at the same time in such gruesome ways. After making it off the island and thriving in her new physical world, Matilda tried to show the enchantment of Great Expectations with others, although she referred to the reading as being her “get-out-of-jail card” (Jones 232) while teaching. She was sharing what she had gained when she had absolutely nothing, with others.
Almost every character in literature experiences some type of loss and some type of gain, otherwise nothing would happen at all. Life would be way too humdrum. Fraulein Maria stated in the movie The Sound of Music, “When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.” (“The Sound”) So, in literature, movies, plays, and even an average human’s life there are losses and gains. It’s how everyone learns from these experiences that shows the great expectations laid out for them. Through Mr. Watts’ actions, he helped to reveal Matilda’s great expectations, “I only know the man who took us kids by the hand and taught us how to reimagine the world, and to see the possibility of change, to welcome it into our lives. […] We needed a magician to conjure up other worlds, and Mr. Watts had become that magician.” (Jones 245) Matilda discovers that because of everything and everyone she has lost and gained, she has a purpose in life and that is to share the enchantment, the escape, the imagination that literature provides. Now about getting off that hypothetical island. It may take some time, but honestly all it really takes is an imagination.
Works Cited
Jones, Lloyd. Mister Pip. New York: The Dial Press, 2008.
"The Sound of Music". IMDB. 8 Aug 2008 http://www
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