Bleak House Atmosphere

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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. He uses several extended metaphors or symbolism such as suffocation, drowning and death One of the clear implications when writing is how he uses the theme of “Suffocation” within the duration of this description. The dictionary definition of “Suffocation” is “preventing the access of air to the blood throughthe lungs or analogous organs, as gills; strangle. This has a strong association on what Dickens is implying in various parts of the description. For example one of the quotes that are used is “(an) oversleeping rip van winkle” In a separate story Rip van Winkle slept for twenty years. So what Dickens is trying to suggest is that Chesney World is out of fashion, out of touch and unaware of the world around it. Another piece of evidence which implies with the theme of suffocation is “there is much good in it… But the evil of it is that the world wrapped up in too much jewellers cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear” Again, he is proposing with the word cotton that they are insulated from the outside world, that they are ignorant and oblivious. Deadlock is the state in which progress is impossible. He has chosen the name Lady Dedlock as the epitome of someone who is immovable, frozen, out of fashion, literally meaning “she’s stuck”. A further example of this literature technique of suffocation is that Dickens has used is “a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air” The words deadened and want of air suggest to the reader

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