In Bleak house the atmosphere he creates is clearly very negative. The colours that are chosen to describe this scene are very desolate. “A lead coloured view and a view in Indian ink” Lead-this word symbolises grey, dreary and lifeless. The next words “a view in Indian ink” Indian ink again meaning black and depressing. Many literary techniques are used to create a level of atmosphere in his writing and descriptions.
How is the beginning of Chapter Two in ‘The Great Gatsby’ similar to T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland and what effects does this have? In ‘The Great Gatsby’, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, chapter two begins with Nick describing a wasteland known as ‘the valley of ashes’, an area between West Egg and New York that completely lacks colour and is simply distinguished by ‘grey’, bleak dust. It is a fatalistic, graphic description in the book, each building, car, and person, seems to be covered with a layer of ‘grey ash’. Symbolically, this waste represents the lack of ethics of the 1920's society and civilization's decay.
The settings in chapter two contrast enormously with those of chapter one; The ‘Valley of Ashes’ that Tom and Nick travel through at the beginning of chapter two are bleak and miserable: ‘...and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.’ This illuminates the repercussions of the American dream that seem to go unnoticed. It wildly differs from the picturesque ‘East Egg’ in chapter one, home to Tom and Daisy, bringing attention to the divide between rich and poor in 1920’s America. The setting of which most of chapter two is set in, the cramped apartment, symbolises the disorder of the situation and the seedy affair of which Tom and Myrtle are involved in. All of the furniture is too large for the small apartment, and the items lying around the apartment are clearly Myrtle’s: ‘Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table together with a copy of Simon Called Peter, and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway.’ Fitzgerald is using the settings to give the reader some insight into what sort of a woman Myrtle is; lower-class and uncultured. The language techniques used by Fitzgerald in the novel successfully tell the story.
Words like broke, dark, drooped, lolling, mildewed, evil, dank, etc indicate that the speaker is overall dissatisfied with this morbid root cellar. The root cellar itself has a negative connotation. Root cellars are seen as a place of forgetting. They are usually the lowest place of a house in which items of the past are thrown away and forgotten about. Mildew and spiders’ webs grow within, and unpleasant smells manifest themselves within root cellars.
“Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, and whistled early with the lark.” It describes the place where he was, to be unbearable and a terrible condition for a boy to be in. The poet wants the mood to be this way because he is trying to portray the negativity of war to the audience. The tone of this poem near the end is in a shameful tone. “You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye who cheer when soldier lads march by,” Sassoon is ashamed of the crowd who are shallow and are only cheering for the young soldiers to go to war and know that not all will return, they do not understand the hardship that the young soldiers have to go through and he is ashamed
The setting of the feature article shapes the tone. The use of emotive language and imagery in the article suggests the tone and setting of the text. The use of emotive language such as “no home, no money, no hope”, “city’s brutal reality” and “heartbreak” all suggest that the tone of the article is depressing which also insinuates that the setting is bleak and desolate. The imagery of the article shows a man on the side of the street asleep with all of his belongings by his side, this is his home and it’s a very depressing scene. The use of the emotive word “brutal” implies that the setting of homelessness for these people is harsh and intemperate.
Generally the images described to us about the criminal underworld were all portrayed as very deprived and foul. Dickens showed the conditions of the local environment in many different ways in his novel. A way in which Dickens showed his epic dislike of London was to describe their local environment using superlatives, Dickens uses phrases such as ‘blackest’ and ‘filthiest’; they are extremes. Dickens uses an excess amount of superlatives; they refer to objects as not being able to be any worse or better. Dickens uses these to emphasise that this is not just dirty, but the “dirtiest” nor just strange but the “strangest” place that he could ever imagine.
He sends a letter to a long time friend because he is ill mentally and emotionally. The unnamed narrator is his long time friend whom he doesn’t know that well, does not decline his invitation. He goes to the Usher mansion on a dark, soundless day and is spooked out. The mansion inside is just dark, gloomy, as the outside. He realizes that the house is just as bad as Roderick’s health.
Many readers interpret this poem as depressing; displaying a man that is regretting something he has done in the past, which creates a melancholy tone. Frost uses the repetition of “I have” (I.1) to make a regretful tone. The persona has done many deeds or actions that have lead to his complete isolation to the outside world. This further develops the thought of suicide in the persona’s mind. Furthermore, the persona states he is “one acquainted with the night” (I.1).
The setting of the short film, a cold, dark apartment in which Frank and Peter are sitting, alone sets the theme of grim isolation and negativity leading to dysfunction and dissatisfaction. The opening dialogue, Frank’s diatribe about nuclear radiation, child labor, the environment, and death, is full of dark imagery. Frank, clearly obsessed in pessimism, is lecturing Peter about death and how people, generally, are not thinking about meaningful things in life as their lives come to an end but rather, thinking about some unsolvable, present circumstance they are consumed with. Frank does not, ironically, realize that he, himself, is consumed with negativity and the circumstances of the world rather than appreciating the experience of life. Peter’s dissatisfaction with Frank’s negative topic of conversation is clearly causing negativity