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Hyperbole
Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Key Examples in Bleak House
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—The Flood:
In the first paragraph of the novel, Dickens alludes to the biblical story of the Flood which drowned the world in the Bible's Book of Genesis, using imagery from that story to describe the sloshy density of the mud covering London:
LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
Explanation and Analysis—Repeated Images:
When Dickens describes London, a great deal of his language at the beginning of the novel emphasizes its endless, repetitive streets and impenetrable, gloomy weather. It's worst, it seems, where the London legal system makes its home, as Dickens tells the reader in Chapter 1:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time [...]
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation: Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Dick Whittington:
Dickens alludes to an English folk tale at the beginning of Chapter 5. In doing so, he invokes the history of England and emphasizes the difference between the smoky streets of London and the fresh air of the "real country road," as Esther recounts:
Unlock with LitCharts A+At last we got into a real country road again, with windmills, rickyards, milestones, farmers’ wagons, scents of old hay, swinging signs and horse troughs: trees, fields, and hedgerows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before us, and the immense metropolis behind; and when a wagon with a train of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding bells, came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around. ‘The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington,’ said Richard [...]
Related Themes:
Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Decaying Holborn:
In comparison to the wealthy, clean, and safe locations in the book, a great deal of the district of Holborn is described using the sensory language of dirt and neglect. Readers feel the grimy, unclean, and unsafe nature of the houses of Tom-All-Alone's, the dingy streets of Chancery, and the foggy, terrifying alleys more intensely through these images. For instance, when he first describes the slum in which Jo lives, Dickens writes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in its every footprint [...]
Related Themes:
Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—"Dead" Lady Dedlock:
When Lady Dedlock learns from Mr. Guppy that Esther's real last name is "Hawdon," she undergoes a ghoulish and visible transformation that paradoxically makes her seem both alive and dead. Dickens uses a simile to describe this state of extreme shock and torpor. After receiving this news, Lady Dedlock appears to Guppy to be
Unlock with LitCharts A+for the moment, dead. He sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence, and of what he has said [...] her dead condition seem to have passed away like the features of those long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which, struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.
Related Themes:
Chapter 32
Explanation and Analysis—The Eyes of Argus:
Dickens alludes to classical mythology within a simile in Chapter 32, referencing the Greek myth of Argus Panoptes. Describing the visual imagery of the "clogged lamps" of Chancery as being like the endlessly watching eyes of Argus, the narrator says:
Unlock with LitCharts A+From tiers of staircase windows, clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candle-light reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheepskin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land.
Related Themes:
Chapter 39
Explanation and Analysis—Decaying Holborn:
In comparison to the wealthy, clean, and safe locations in the book, a great deal of the district of Holborn is described using the sensory language of dirt and neglect. Readers feel the grimy, unclean, and unsafe nature of the houses of Tom-All-Alone's, the dingy streets of Chancery, and the foggy, terrifying alleys more intensely through these images. For instance, when he first describes the slum in which Jo lives, Dickens writes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in its every footprint [...]
Related Themes:
Chapter 40
Explanation and Analysis—Darkened Portraits:
Dickens foreshadows the death of Lady Dedlock in Chapter 40 through a series of visual images involving the Dedlock family portraits. These images spell out not only her impending death, but the downfall of the noble family as a whole:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age and death. And now, upon my lady’s picture over the great chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker rises shadow on the wall [...]
Related Themes:
