Pip as a Sympathetic Character in Great Expectations Can you imagine being totally in love with someone who is completely disappointed in you? This is what happens to Pip. Throughout the book Estella ignores her feelings. In Great Expectations my sympathy for Pip fluctuates. Pip starts out as a sympathetic character because he is poor, his parents are dead, and he has to live by Mrs. Joe's strict rules. As the story progresses, my sympathy for Pip diminishes in all but one: his relationship with Estella. From their first acquaintance, Pip thought Estella was the most beautiful girl in the world. It changes when it surrounds her. When Mrs. Havisham asks Pip about Estella, he responds with words like "proud," "pretty," and "offensive." Miss Havisham wants Pip to like Estella, and tells Estella that she can break his heart. As visits to Miss Havisham increase, Pip realizes his feelings for Estella. He practically can't live without her, but she treats him like an ordinary guy. Pip wants more than anything to become rare so that Estella can like him. He wants her to see him as a person and not an ignorant blacksmith's apprentice. Estella begins to realize that Pip has feelings and teases him by asking if he thinks she's pretty. A significant scene is when Estella questions Pip about herself and she slaps him. Then she teases him even more and says why doesn't he cry again. Pip replies, "Because I'll never cry for you again," but he knows it's not true and says that "it was, I suppose, as false a statement as ever was made, for then inside of me I was crying for her, and I know what I know of the pain he caused me afterwards" (94). As the two characters grow and mature and as Pip becomes a gentleman, Estella learns the extent of Pip's feelings. He tells Pip that he is going to get married and says that his grief should pass in no time, about a week. Pip then reveals every thought and feeling he has ever had for Estella over the years. The most important parts of his confession are found at the beginning of the speech. Pip confesses: "...you are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have read, since I first came here, the rough, common boy whose poor heart you have wounded even At that time..