Great Expectations is notable for the numerous interconnections between its various characters: Estella, we discover, is the daughter of Magwitch, while Magwitch's arch-enemy, Compeyson, is the traitorous lover of Miss Havisham, Estella's mother by adoption. These connections of blood or experience should not be regarded as technical contrivances by Dickens the storyteller; rather they are significantly revealed as the story unfolds to articulate an underlying, universal logic. It is clear that Dickens perceived reality as operating not through a random progression of events, but organically as links in an unbroken chain: "Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day" (p. 67).
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