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other foot passengers have been slipping and and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog
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sliding since the day broke (if this day ever drooping on the gunwales of barges and small
broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient
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crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides
to the pavement, and accumulating at compound of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the
interest. afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and
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flows among green aits and meadows; fog down fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck.
the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of Chance people on the bridges peeping over the
Analyzing Short Fiction
shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round
(and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging
the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the in the misty clouds.
© Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.
cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards 1853
2 Small islands. — Eds. 3 Retirees. — Eds.

The diction in the beginning of the passage sets the time and place: the city of
DIFFERENTIATION London, in November, in weather described as “implacable,” an example of
personification that implies it cannot be pacified. From there, descriptions of mud and
Collaborative Learning
fog take over most of the passage. Similes abound, with the mud accumulating “as if
The first paragraph discusses how literary the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth.” Soot comes out of
elements and techniques reveal the chimneys like snowflakes that have “gone into mourning . . . for the death of the sun.”
significance of the scene. Ask students to Pedestrians walk “in a general infection of ill temper.”
work together in small groups to determine Everything that follows describes where the fog is — everywhere — and how it
the tone of the piece using the textbook’s insinuates itself into everyone’s lives. An unrelenting force, it is not only in the
observations.
physical environment but in “the eyes and throats of elderly . . . pensioners.”
Dickens repeats the word “fog” at the start of nearly every sentence, building a
sense of its inescapable nature. The syntax in this paragraph is interesting, too — all
DIFFERENTIATION of the sentences are actually fragments. This choice could suggest the ways in
Collaborative Learning which fog interrupts people’s everyday lives and how the inconvenience of it is
something they have to overcome. Again using personification, Dickens writes that
Ask students to consider the textbook’s the fog operates “cruelly” and envelops people “as if they were up in a balloon and
observations: “Taken together, the hanging in the misty clouds.” Taken together, the descriptive language, figures of
descriptive language, figures of speech, speech, and unusual syntax combine to create a sense of being unable to see
and unusual syntax combine to create clearly ahead, let alone around the next corner.
a sense of being unable to see clearly
ahead, let alone around the next corner.” As we’ve analyzed some literary elements in this passage, you’ve probably
Ask students what an individual’s noted that some descriptions at first don’t seem to make sense or fit together.
emotional attitude toward the city might Writers often use overstatement or hyperbole to exaggerate and signal to the
be given these observations. How would reader that something is important, often because it is wrong or out of place. That
someone feel?

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34 chapter 1 / Analyzing Short Fiction

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