Analysis of the Setting in Domby and Son by Charles Dickens
The prevailing atmosphere of the text is gloomy and bleak, and the mood is murky and dreary. Lexico-semantic groups of words which help in creating the mood of the text: * Dark (blackened, shady, dirty, twilight) * Grey (smoke-dried, gaunt, invisible, dismal) * Death (murders, funeral, dead, buried) * Dreadful (awful, monstrous, ghastly, grim)
To create the gloomy atmosphere of the outside of the house, Dickens uses such colour adjectives as ‘blackened’, ‘white’ (mice) and ‘grey’, and epithets ‘tall’, ‘dark’, ‘dreadfully’, ‘shady’.
The epithet ‘dark’ is repeated several times and accentuates the general mood of the text. The use of ‘dismal’, ‘smoke-dried’, ‘gaunt’ emphasizes the idea of reticence, secretiveness. The contents of this text are conveyed in visual terms, so the personifications ‘barred windows’ and ‘crooked-eyed’ produce the effect of a sinister presence intensified by the words ‘frown’ and ‘leer’.
The image of two gaunt trees combines visual and audial effects played by the onomatopoeia (‘rattled rather than rustled’) and colour adjectives ‘blackened’, ‘smoke-dried’. This image symbolizes death and the absence of emotions. The distinctive simile between the ‘chandelier’ and ‘vault’, expressed by comparison ‘a monstrous tear’, stresses the connotation of humidity which is connected with the bleak atmosphere of the passage.
In the beginning of the text, the author's vision pans with impersonal curiosity over a wide prospect, then accentuates various details which gradually merge into distinct patterns. The phrase ‘eng papered up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadful murders’ contributes majorly to the general theme of the text, and ‘picture-frame of ghastly bandages’ adds to the sinister impression of the description. There is an element of personification which creates a morbid retrospective: ‘some fragments of the straw that had been strewn before the house when she was ill, mildewed
To create the gloomy atmosphere of the outside of the house, Dickens uses such colour adjectives as ‘blackened’, ‘white’ (mice) and ‘grey’, and epithets ‘tall’, ‘dark’, ‘dreadfully’, ‘shady’.
The epithet ‘dark’ is repeated several times and accentuates the general mood of the text. The use of ‘dismal’, ‘smoke-dried’, ‘gaunt’ emphasizes the idea of reticence, secretiveness. The contents of this text are conveyed in visual terms, so the personifications ‘barred windows’ and ‘crooked-eyed’ produce the effect of a sinister presence intensified by the words ‘frown’ and ‘leer’.
The image of two gaunt trees combines visual and audial effects played by the onomatopoeia (‘rattled rather than rustled’) and colour adjectives ‘blackened’, ‘smoke-dried’. This image symbolizes death and the absence of emotions. The distinctive simile between the ‘chandelier’ and ‘vault’, expressed by comparison ‘a monstrous tear’, stresses the connotation of humidity which is connected with the bleak atmosphere of the passage.
In the beginning of the text, the author's vision pans with impersonal curiosity over a wide prospect, then accentuates various details which gradually merge into distinct patterns. The phrase ‘eng papered up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadful murders’ contributes majorly to the general theme of the text, and ‘picture-frame of ghastly bandages’ adds to the sinister impression of the description. There is an element of personification which creates a morbid retrospective: ‘some fragments of the straw that had been strewn before the house when she was ill, mildewed