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Such mannerisms would be less worthy of remark, were it not that in Great Expectations, as in no other of Dickens' novels, hands serve as a leitmotif of plot and theme -- a kind of unifying symbol or natural metaphor for the book's complex of human interrelationships and the values and attitudes that motivate them.

Dickens not only reveals character through gesture, he makes hands a crucial element of the plot, a means of clarifying the structure of the novel by helping to define the hero's relations with all the major characters, and a device for ordering such diverse themes as guilt, pursuit, crime, greed, education, materialism, enslavement ( by both people and institutions ), friendship, romantic love, forgiveness, and redemption.

We have only to think of Lady Macbeth or the policeman-murderer in Thomas Burke's famous story, `` The Hands Of Mr. Ottermole '', to realize that hands often call up ideas of crime and punishment.

So it is with Great Expectations, whether the hands be Orlick's as he strikes down Mrs. Gargery or Pip's as he steals a pie from her pantry.

Such associations suit well with the gothic or mystery-story aspects of Dickens' novel, but, on a deeper plane, they relate to the themes of sin, guilt, and pursuit that have recently been analyzed by other critics.