Our Mutual Friend Lesson Plan

What is the immediate fallout to our learning that John Harmon is still alive?

The major impact of this section is the reveal that John Harmon is still alive, having assumed new identities as both John Rokesmith and Julius Handford. By this point, the reader has been amply primed to expect this connection, with the narrator having dropped many hints. The full reveal of how Harmon came to be believed to be dead is nonetheless still a striking and dramatic story.

It offers perhaps the most explicit and violent betrayal that has appeared so far in the novel: he trusted Radfoot to help him and yet he was drugged, beaten, and left for dead by a man he considered to be a...