Portrayal of London in the Opening of Bleak House Essay example -- ess

The first paragraph of Bleak House alone gives the ratifier an instant idea of how Charles Dickens saw capital of the United Kingdom to be nearly 1842. He has portrayed the streets to be muddy and extremely polluted, As a lot mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the governing body of the earth. Here Dickens has used a slight amount of hyperbole to emphasize his point. He also uses personification when referring to the snow flakes, saying that they produce gone into mourning, ?smoke lowering downwardly from the chimneypots, reservation a well-fixed black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as giving snowflakes?gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.? the contrast of the imagery he is using helps for the reader to imagine the scene, the contrast of the black flakes of soot and the sporty snow flakes, in my opinion could represent good and evil, and the idea that capital of the United Kingdom is so evil and polluted tha t their snow flakes are no eternal white, they have turned black. He also makes reference to the cold aristocratical weather they are having at the time, referring to it as ?the death of the sun?. Readers may see this as Pathetic Fallacy as he refers to the alkali passengers on the streets of London as having ?A general infection of feverous temper? giving the popular opinion that the cold harsh weather and milieu make people more irritable but also reflecting the peoples stroke temperedness in the weather.?Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows, fog down the river?. Repetition is used a lot here to have impact. The concomitant that fog is repeated so many times gives the reader the impression that in that location is an overwhelming amount of fog, and to give the reader the sense that there is no way they can escape the fog, fog ... ...tected from the fog, as if he is like the eye of the storm, ?softly fenced in?. The fog and miser y of London which is portrayed in the opening of Bleak House seems to centre on Lincoln?s Inn Hall and the Lord Chancellor, Dickens has devoted the reader the impression that the government is to blame and that they are just for video display and don?t do anything to help, just put on a show for the people of London, as they are purely ceremonial, ?Running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of delivery and making a pretence of equality with serious faces.? Dickens is making the statement that the Government seems to only have time for the rich and favored apposed to the poor and that they do not view society equally, but they furnish to pretend they do. This gives the reader the impression that London is very much establish on classes according to the government.