The metaphor of Robert Frost’s “the road not taken” in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

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Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861) is usually read and even taught with the relationship between Pip and Estella at sit center.

This study shifts the focus to Pip and Joe relationship, viewing this relationship as another center for the novel.

Unlike other studies that relegate Joe to the margin, this study presents him not only as another major character but also as Pip’s double.

Dickens employs Joe to enable Pip take the two roads when Pip’s road diverges to the blacksmith’s road and the gentleman’s road and virtually enables Pip to know what the two roads have to offer him .

Before Joe replaces Pip on one of the two orads, Dickens carefully paves the way for this replacement.

First, Dickens begins the novel with Pip, as a boy, suffering from identity problems, opening the door for different possible readings of Pip’s identity.

Second, he presents the young Pip and Joea s two characters who have much in common: have the same good nature and interests, tied to one another by real friendship, treated alike by Mrs.

Joe.

Equally important, Pip and Joe unite physically three times in the course of the novel to form one movign body when Joe carries Pip on three different occasions.

The ending of the novel supports this new reading as Joe marries Biddy who once has been Pip’s choice for a wife.

Moreover, they name their first child Pip, an indication that he is strongly related to the original Pip who is now a gentleman .