How setting is used
In this extract from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, the weather reflects what is happening in Pip’s mind.
Pip is the main character and narrator in Great Expectations
Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts, that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs; and in the country, trees had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away; and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.
Charles Dickens’s, Great Expectations, Ch. 39
Analysis
- The gloomy weather reflects the main character’s unhappiness.
- The description of the gusts of wind and rain shows the action of his thoughts. The violence of these gusts represents Pip’s confusion. This technique is called Technique where the environment (usually the weather) reflects the emotions of the main character..