Here, the working class hero, Joe, always smokes a pipe which ends up connoting his place in the world. Consider when the protagonist and narrator, Pip, first receives his “Great Expectations” and must leave his blacksmith apprenticeship under Joe to take up the life of an English gentleman. The socially mobile Pip has little regard for the “mean little room from which [he] should soon be separated and above, forever,” but cannot absolve his feelings at having abandoned Joe and his former class identity as a blacksmith's apprentice (145 ). The next day, as Joe arrives smoking his pipe to discuss Pip's departure, Pip confesses that he "saw string lights from Joe's pipe floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe... pervading the air that we shared together" (146 ). For Pip, Joe's true essence as a worker is the tobacco smoke that follows him wherever he goes. It is in this capacity as a class designator that only tobacco is able to bless Pip's escape from the working class