Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1852 – 1853)
Commentary
These opening lines to Charles Dickens’s Bleak House are selected for
commentary because of its literary features. The commentary will focus
on the usage of language, diction, style, sentence construction,
grammar, and literary devices used in the passage to create a picture of
a pre-historic time in modern London.
The passage begins with an astonishingly short and abrupt ‘sentence’
that is, technically speaking, grammatically incomplete, because it does
not have either a verb or an object. The reader gets the implication
behind it: the scene in which events following this sentence will take
place is London. Furthermore, the subsequent sentences are no better:
in fact, they are all grammatically incomplete. Here Dickens bypasses
conventional grammar in order to create a sense of incompleteness in
the reader as he reads the passage. However, despite the imperfect
grammar, the sentence length varies from one word to forty-three words
in length. This indicates robust flexibility in Dickens’s prose style in
compensation for the unusual grammar he is using.
The tone in the passage is dramatic. Dickens's use of the word
‘implacable’ to describe the winterly weather in November seems
unusual because the word means ‘unappeasable’. The tone gets even
more depressing when Dickens describes the smoke from chimney pots as
a ‘soft black drizzle’. An image of London city itself, where it always
rains, is gloomy enough, let alone ‘drizzle of rain’. Dickens uses an even
more intensely sad tone as he describes flakes of soot ‘gone into
mourning…for the death of the sun’.
Images in this passage, though despondent, are vividly described. Dickens
breathes life into his non-living world by using a realistic style and two
literary devices: oxymoron and anthropomorphism. For instance, London,
Lincoln’s Inn Hall, and Holborn Hill help construct realism in this passage;
the names emphasize the concreteness of the world Dickens is
describing. In other words, one can rest assured that if one goes to
London, one will see these places, because they exist. However, such
specific nature appears in stark contrast to the pre-historicism Dickens
creates. He embeds ‘Megalosaurus’, his ‘elephantine lizard’, into a
seemingly modern London. This implanting of a pre-historic monster into
the modern London forms a sense of oxymoron or paradox, which is
illustrated by the juxtaposition of ‘elephantine’ next to ‘lizard’. In the
last sentence, ‘flakes of soot’ are said to be ‘as big as full grown
snowflakes’, which, again, creates oxymoron. Here Dickens introduces
the notion of blackness in his ‘flakes of soot’, yet also brings in the
whiteness of ‘full grown snowflakes’, and compares the two contrasting
things as equally big. Dickens also uses his favourite anthropomorphism:
the adjective ‘full grown’ suggests that the snowflakes are human,
capable of ‘go[ing] into mourning…for the death of the Sun’. Such
literary genius helps Dickens create a world in which things are in
paradox and anthropomorphic: modernity is pre-historicity, whiteness is
blackness, and inanimate things are full of life.
One last literary device that also helps the reader envision a pre-historic
modern London is allusion. The images of ‘as much mud in the streets’
and ‘the waters’ point to a slight Biblical echo and suggest a London that
is engulfed in rain and flood. This alludes to the Great Flood in the Bible,
which is an appropriate metaphor for London and fits neatly with the
idea of an ancient world Dickens is summoning. Dickens’s choice of
diction further reinforces this powerful allusion. Instead of using
‘recently’, Dickens employs ‘newly’, and in place of ‘astonishing’,
Dickens uses ‘wonderful’, in order to polish the pre-historic portrayal of
the world he is describing. That is because ‘newly’ suggests a sense of
birth, i.e. something comes into being, and ‘wonderful’ implies that one
would ‘wonder at the sight of the great ancient world’. Furthermore,
‘the death of the sun’ alludes to the Apocalypse in the Bible, when
everything will come to an end, and darkness will prevail over light,
returning the world to its pre-historicity.
In just four ‘sentences’, albeit grammatically imperfect, Dickens uses his
literary genius to colorfully produce a picture of the modern city of
London that is engulfed by depressing rain, mourning flakes of soot, dead
sun, darkness, and pre-historic monster.
TESTING THE REALITY – poem by Tony Harrison
SETTING
The poem is about life and death and the church is seen here as a kind of platform (of
faith) from which the birds soar into the sky and the poet’s mother departs for what may
be an after-life.
Reference to the cycle of night and day (lines 6-7), and time passing (lines 8-10; lines
11-12); and the phrase ‘the light of what they steered their course by (lines 14 and 15) –
the sun, or her religious belief. We thus learn that the poem is about ‘bigger’ things than
the departure of a flock of birds, or even the death of a single person.
In the final line we are brought back to the poet as both a child and a man, standing alone
in the church, which has been a kind of nest for the birds. (The similarity in sound –
called assonance – between ‘clutch’ and ‘church’ emphasises the connection.)
CHARACTER
He could count only to 20, and it was a ‘ragged’ 20 at that, which suggests that he did it
very unevenly and hesitantly. That puts him at about – what, four years old?
He feels alone, bereft, and condemned to ignorance because he is now shut off from the
light of the sun (belief in God? knowledge of what comes after death?)
ACTION
The death of his mother has been (in the end) as sudden and complete as he remembers
the departure of the birds being when he was a child. He imagines himself as an
unhatched egg left behind when the rest of the flock depart for warmer weather.
We have to think that it is at least thirty years, if we consider the likely age of the poet’s
mother when he was a young child and her age when she died. So when she does die he
remembers the earlier episode and sees the connection. (The way the poem is written
brings the two things together as if they happen in quick succession. You could ask
yourself whether that is effective or just confusing.)
STYLE
They were ‘flocking’ (line 2), which in itself indicates large numbers. They ‘crammed’
the church roof etc. as if there was no room for any more. Their noise was very loud.
There were so many that he could only guess at their numbers (line 5). And still those
numbers grew (line 8).
The poet remains alone in the ‘clutch’ while all the others (his mother, the birds) have
gone ‘beyond… touch’: the rhyme emphasises the idea that he has been left behind and
feels desolate.
IDEAS
Life and death? Loss through death? They’re a bit vague – again we’d have to call them
themes, or topics, rather than ideas. A more precise idea would be something like, ‘How
an early memory can take on greater significance when something happens to us later in
life.’ That’s a long phrase, however!