Charles Dickens Classroom

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Patrick Pham Mr. Bird AP Language and Composition 1 October 2014 Charles Dickens Use of Diction Many writers express how they feel about a particular subject by creating a certain tone with different types of literary devices or techniques. Some of these types of writing methods they use include a specific kind of diction or connotation. In Hard Times, Charles Dickens uses techniques of diction to create a tone of monotonous, describing how he views a classroom, or the world, to be demanding and black and white during his time. One type of word choice Dickens uses are adjectives that show a plebeian or monotonous connotation to show his belief on how the world is. Dickens calls the school room “plain, bare, monotonous” and the voice of the speaker as “inflexible, dry, and dictatorial” (Dickens 6, 12). Charles Dickens uses adjectives with dull and bland connotation that describe the classroom because he wants to show his audience that the world is indistinctive with only rules to follow. He also describes the speaker this way to portray him/her as a stiff and rigid leader, showing that the world has become boring with a one dimensional leader, by using words that are associated with staleness or firmness. Another technique of diction Dickens uses to express his thought on society is by using nouns or figurative phrases that are connected with inflexibility. The speaker expresses the idea of everyone knowing “nothing but Facts” in life and even poured “imperial gallons of facts” into himself (Dickens 18, 21). The speaker is not only monotonous in Dickens’s view, but he is also shown as a dictator or a demanding leader by only wanting “Facts” which is associated to something that should be followed at all times. Dickens even explained how the speaker had figuratively poured Facts into himself to also show how he had indulged himself to only Facts or rules,
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