In Great Expectations, the convict who becomes Pip’s benefactor is Abel Magwitch. Pip first encounters Magwitch as an escaped prisoner in a churchyard on the marshes, where the frightened boy is forced to bring him food and a file.
Magwitch later disappears from Pip’s life and is transported to Australia. After making money there as a sheep farmer, he secretly funds Pip’s education and London lifestyle. Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is his mysterious benefactor and believes his rise into gentlemanly society is connected to Estella, so the revelation that Magwitch is behind the money becomes one of the novel’s sharpest reversals.
The gift is emotionally complicated. Magwitch’s generosity comes from gratitude: Pip showed him kindness when almost everyone else treated him as worthless. Dickens uses the relationship to challenge Victorian assumptions about crime, class, respectability, and moral worth.
Readers sometimes confuse Magwitch with Compeyson, the more polished criminal who betrayed him, or with Joe Gargery, Pip’s loyal brother-in-law. Magwitch is the benefactor; Joe is Pip’s true source of steadfast affection.