Discussion of the text

1. The extract presents a description of London full of illumination, noise and movement. What language means contribute to the bright illumination? (Pay special attention to epithets, metaphors)

2. How is the idea of noise and movement brought home to the reader? Point out stylistic devices (metaphor, simile, epithets, repetition, onomatopoeia and climax).

3. How is the dynamic quality of the description enforced?

4. The wealth of London finds its embodiment in the enumeration of goods displayed in shop windows. What means back it up and stress the quality of the variety of goods?

5. Nicholas and his fellow-travellers were struck by the wealth contained in the shops of London. How is that made obvious?

6. The reader is made to understand that the goods were of high quality and could meet the demands of the most choosy person. Point out high-flown words pertaining to this idea.

* a funeral hatchment – the escutcheon (герб) of a titled person which is placed in front of the house to announce the person’s death

7. The reader gets the impression that all layers of society could be well provided for in London shops. Find substantivized adjectives that are in keeping with the idea. Point out means that serve to create a generalizing effect.

8. The concluding paragraph lends a different mood to the description – that of contrast of luxury and poverty. What stylistic devices make the contrast glaring? Note metonymies, metaphors, similes, antitheses, parallel constructions, climax.

9. Is the syntactic structure of the extract in keeping with Dickens’s style of description. Point out complicated complex sentences. Study their function.

TEXTS FOR INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS

Vanity fair

by William Makepeace Thackeray

Dobbin of Ours

Part One

Some time after this interview, it happened that Mr. Cuff, on a sunshiny afternoon, was in the neighbourhood of poor William Dobbin, who was lying under a tree in the playground, spelling over a favourite copy of the “Arabian Nights” which he had—apart from the rest of the school, who were pursuing their various sports—quite lonely, and almost happy. […]

Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and was away with Sindbad the sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the prince found her, and wither we should all like to make a tour, when shrill cries, as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his pleasant reverie; and looking up, he saw Cuff before him, belabouring a little boy.

It was the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer’s cart; but he bore little malice, not at least toward the young and small. […]

[…] Dobbin quivered, and gathered himself up in his narrow old clothes.

“Take that, you little devil!” cried Mr. Cuff, and down came the wicket again on the child’s hand. Don’t be horrified, ladies, every boy at a public school has done it. Your children will so do and be done by, in all probability. Down came the wicket again, and Dobbin started up.

I can’t tell what his motive was. Torture in a public school is as much licensed as the knout in Russia. It would be ungentlemanlike (in a manner) to resist it. Perhaps Dobbin’s foolish soul revolted against the exercise of tyranny, or perhaps he had a hankering feeling of revenge in his mind, and longed to measure himself against that splendid bully and tyrant, who had all the glory, pride, pomp, circumstance, banners flying, drums beating, guards saluting, in the place. Whatever may have been his incentive, however up the sprang, and screamed out, “Hold off, Cuff, don’t bully that child any more, or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?” Cuff asked in amazement at this interruption. “Hold out your hand, you little beast.”

“I’ll give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your life,” Dobbin said, in reply to the first part of Cuff’s sentence; and little Osborne, gasping and in tears, looked up with wonder and incredulity at seeing this amazing champion put up suddenly to defend him, while Cuff’s astonishment was scarcely less. Fancy our late monarch George III when he heard of the revolt of the North American Colonies; fancy brazen Goliath when little David stepped forward and claimed a meeting, and you have the feelings of Mr. Reginald Cuff when this rencontre was proposed to him.

“After school,” says he, of course; after a pause and a look, as much as to say, “Make your will, and communicate your last wishes to your friends between this time and that.”

“As you please,” Dobbin said. “You must be my bottle-holder, Osborn.”

“Well, if you like,” little Osborn replied; for you see his papa kept a carriage, and he was rather ashamed of his champion.

Yes, when the hour of the battle came, he was almost ashamed to say, “Go it, Figs,” and not a single other boy in the place uttered that cry for the first two or three rounds of this famous combat; at the commencement of which the scientific Cuff, with a contemptuous smile on his face, and as light and as gay as if he was at a ball, planted his blows upon his adversary, and floored that unlucky champion three times running. At each fall there was a cheer, and everybody was anxious to have the honour of offering the conqueror a knee.

“What a licking I shall get when it’s over!” young Osborn thought, picking up his man. “You’d best give in,” he said to Dobbin; “it’s only a trashing, Figs, and you know I’m used to it.” But Figs, all whose limbs were in a quiver, and whose nostrils were breathing rage, put his little bottle-holder aside, and went in for a fourth time.

As he did not in the least know how to parry the blows that were aimed at himself, and Cuff had begun the attack on the three preceding occasions, without ever allowing this enemy to strike, Figs now determined that he would commence the engagement by a charge on his own part; and accordingly, being a left-handed man, brought that arm into action, and hit out a couple of times with all his might—once at Mr. Cuff’s left eye, and once on his beautiful Roman nose.

Cuff went down this time, to the astonishment of the assembly. “Well hit, by Jove,” says little Osborne, with the air of a connoisseur, clapping his man on the back. “Give it him with the left, Figs, my boy.”

Fig’s left made terrific play during all the rest of the combat. Cuff went down every time. […]

(Михальская. Reading from English Literature, pp.123-124)