Joe from great expectations

While it suits the plot for Pip's protector to be a blacksmith (he has the means to remove the convict's leg-iron) it also seems a fitting occupation for the man Dickens depicts. The job is hard and requires skill, yet no formal learning, so Joe seems a fool to those around him. We forgive the child, Pip, for doing this. But others - Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook - both patronize Joe and ignore him. Miss Havisham, a shrewder judge, seems to see what Joe is really like, in spite of his awkwardness, when she signs Pip's indentures (i.e. when Pip is apprenticed).
Joe becomes self-conscious and tongue-tied in unfamiliar surroundings, yet can speak well. This does not appear in the clumsy rhyme of his intended epitaph for his father ("Whatsume'er the failings on his part, Remember reader he were that good in his hart"). Joe is more eloquent when he says of his blacksmith father: "he hammered at me with a wigour (vigour) only to be equalled by the wigour with which he didn't hammer at his anvil...