Our brains think in pictures, the brain is therefore greatly influenced by the use of vivid imagery,the principle of conveying msg thro images is universal in its effctivness. In any piece of literry work using imagery is a very skillfull technique with it’s a various significances. images suggest a meaning beyond the physical facts of the images themselves. It takes your story beyond simple plot or character development and creates depth and meaning.
A good writer will use symbols that enhance the story's theme or pulls together all the fictional elements providing unity ; strength to the text. Symbols/imagery are often used to foreshadow later events in a story. Charles Dickens employs certain tools to create particular effects in 'The Bleak House'. A combination of these techniques allows for the semantics to be clearly expressed Charles Dickens characters are a very important part of his writing he uses his characters moods and emotions to create imagery He uses imagery to create the atmosphere by using material object to symbolize an emotional state.
Charles Dickens also elaborates on the mood of a scene by using dark and light colors and using emotion to make the scene more dramatic. FOG: Chancery is introduced in the first chapter and from the opening sentences the Court is linked with the symbols of fog and mud: 'Never can there come a fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep,... olds, this day' There is the prevailing view of imagery in bleak house asociatd wid institutionz whch sands for the “dead hand of the past” the mud ; fog sroundng the high crt of chancery, flood wtr threatnng 2 engulf Chesney wold, the seat of arstocratc deadlock fmly,these imgs hav cmbined to sugest to most readers in Zabel’s words “frustrations that cast humanity back into the drakest abysses of ancient blindness ; primitiv futility “ they cmbine an antediluvian age ; obselescence to moribund institutions such as chancory ; aristocracy.
Two quite effective symbols in Bleak House are the fog and 'the Roman' who points down from Mr. Tulkinghorn's ceiling and symbolizes the theme of retribution, of evil ultimately bringing ruin upon itself. In turn, the 'technique' of foreshadowing lends unity to the story because it prepares us by dealing with things that will be developed later on. The Bleak House fog is a complex symbol that foreshadows several motifs of importance. Richard Carstone, for example, gradually becomes 'lost,' unable to 'see,' in the mental and spiritual fog generated by the High Court of Chancery.
A literary work does not necessarily become depressing or morbid simply because some of its subjects are gloomy, painful, Heavy, persistent fog is not something that tends to lift spirits and brighten faces. In a story, such a fog may even serve as a symbol of institutional oppression and human confusion and misery. The fog that Dickens creates for Bleak House serves him in exactly that way. And yet it is not, after all, a real-life fog, but a verbal description of the real-life thing.
The fog is striking, piquant; it even has something of the glamour of the mysterious. It is alwys dificlt to infer a systm of ideas from pattern of images, Dickens is an artist who delights in imagination and who is in charge of his material as he imagines and writes things down — he is enjoying the fog he creates, and that enjoyment is inevitably conveyed to us as we read. In fact, part of what Dickens delights in as he puts the fog together word by word is his very ability to describe so interestingly.
James M. Brown very gives very apt description of themes of bleak house, 'His social criticism is embodied in a vision of social experience in its generality-the essential quality of everyday social relations throughout the system, and the general possiblities for a fulfilling social life' The third-person narration contains the themes of economic interconnectedness and social criticism while Esther's narration emphasizes moral connectedness and individual responsibility. Chancery and disease ymbolic significance of Chancery is representative of the entire society. The lawyers of Chancery, like the Barnacles of the Circumlocution Office, work exclusively in their own self-interest and the Court 'is simply a socially condoned form of parasitism_as is graphically confirmed by the eventual lot of the Jarndyce estate, which is eaten up in costs' (Daleski, 20). Just as a biological parasite will eventually weaken and destroy its host, the parasitical corruption of a national institution will eventually weaken and destroy the rest of society.
Thus, the primary symbol of Chancery and its effect on the society is that of disease resulting from moral corruption and social parasitism with death looming behind. The infectious disease of Chancery becomes the practical way in which Chancery connects the spheres of law, politics, and the high and low classes. Richard Carstone withers away from the moral corruption of Chancery while the disease bred in Nemo's burial ground and Tom-all-Alone's infects Jo, then Charley and Esther, and probably contributes to Lady Dedlock's demise.
As Jeremy Hawthorn writes, 'Disease is such a powerful symbol for Dickens in Bleak House because it involves different kinds of expressive connections: it arises from specific, concrete and material living conditions, living-conditions which are themselves the cause of particular social realities, and it also links the poor with those rich who wish to disclaim any relationship with or responibility for them' The social and physical disease created and spread by Chancery becomes a metaphor for the corruption of the entire society.
The deadening effects of the corruption and disease that infect Bleak House society can be seen most vividly in the portrayals of various key characters. The descriptions of Krook and his Rag and Bottle Shop are meant to function as a grim moral parallel with the Lord Chancellor and Chancery. Mr. Krook attests, 'I have so many old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust and must and cobwebs... And I can't bear to part with anything once I lay hold of or to alter anything, or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning... that's why I've got the ill name of Chancery.
I go to see my... brother pretty well every day, when he sits in the Inn... There's no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle' Krook's shop, in its filth and horror, exemplifies in a concrete, physical way the true moral nature of the Court. Likewise, the lives of those who work within the Court like Mr. Tulkinghorn and Mr. Vholes have been infected with spiritual decay but of a predatory kind. Tulkinghorn is 'a dark, cold object' (508) and 'like a machine' (512) who jealously guards aristocratic family secrets and has become rich administering marriage settlements and wills (13).
Mr. Vholes looks at Richard 'as if he were making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his professional appetite' (485). This inhuman parasitism extends out through the society to characters like the Smallweeds whose 'God was Compound Interest. [Their patriarch] lived for it, married it, died of it' and who are also variously described as animals of prey such as 'a money-getting species of spider, who spun webs to catch unwary flies' (257).
The link between lawyers of Chancery and the Smallweeds as social parasites is rendered exact by the analogy of 'lawyers [who] lie like maggots in nuts' (119) and Mr. Smallweed's grandfather who valued only 'grubs' and 'never bred a single butterfly' Such a pervasive system of disease, decay and death cannot be without its victims. Mis flites caged birds, symbolizing the victims of Chancery, and her many prescient comments serve as omens of Richard's fate.
And her concern with the 'Great Seal' suggests that in this society true justice may only be had in the after-life. The deaths of Richard and Jo are strangely counterpointed in that both are essentially born and bred in Chancery. But Richard's abilities and advantages are not enough to save him. Though Woodcourt diagnoses that Richard's illness is not physical, he still 'consumes himself with the care and suspense and distrust and doubt engendered by Chancery' (Daleski, 31). At the other end of the social spectrum, Jo is a victim from the start.
Dreadfully poor and uneducated, he can only react to his circumstances in this parasitic society. But the disease that is bred in Tom-all-Alone's, the ultimate effect of society's corruption and neglect of the most unprotected, both causes and revenges Jo's suffering and death, thus exacting justice of a different order. ANIMAL IMAGERY The dehumanization of so many of Bleak House's characters and their portrayals as various animals, indicating they have regressed to a more bestial or selfish nature, supports the views of both critics.
Indeed, Bleak House insightfully explores one of the paradoxes of modern life in an industrialized economy; as economic centralization proceeds and people become more economically interdependent, they also become morally and spiritually isolated and disconnected from each other as every aspect of their lives tends to become absorbed into 'the system. ' But though the system may indeed be dehumanizing at best, evil at worst, the individuals who give in to and/or endorse the system contribute to that evil through abdication of personal responsibility.
COMBUSTION An analogy between disease and revolution is suggested in a description of Tom-All-Alone's, 'Verily, what with tainting, plundering and spoiling, Tom has his revenge' (553). Brown points out that this theme is related to a pattern of imagery, 'the image of the springing or exploding of a mine or bomb' (71). In another passage describing Tom's, ' Twice, lately, there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the springing of a mine, in Tom-All-Alone's; and, each time, a house has fallen... he next crash in Tom-All-Alone's may be expected to be a good one' (197-8) the possibility of social upheaval is implied. And the effect of a revolution on the upper classes is likened to the effect the truth about Lady Dedlock has on Sir Leicester when Bucket reveals it in the chapter titled 'Springing a Mine. ' The Victorian fear of revolution and the horror with which the British viewed the French Revolution is alluded to when Hortense, Lady Dedlock's French maid, is described as 'a bodily spring' (517) and she appears to Esther like 'some woman from the streets of Paris in the reign of terror' (286).
Yet the most imaginative image of revolution is Krook's death by spontaneous combustion. In his identification with the Lord Chancellor of the High Court, Krook dies 'the death of all... authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done... it is the same death eternally-inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself' (403). By analogy, the warning is clear. If things do not change, if society does not address the suffering and needs of its citizens, the society will explode in revolt.
Author: Frank Frazier