COMMENTARY

1. So furious had been the gusts, …

Note the inverted word order in this sentence. This word order is usually resorted to to emphasize the idea expressed in a sentence or passage. To give the description an emotional colouring and to intensify the feeling of gloom and impending horrors Dickens uses in this passage some other stylistic devices besides inversion. They are: a specific choice of epithets pertaining to weather (wretched, stormy, wet), parallel constructions and reiteration.

Reiteration (repetition) is one of the basic figures of speech employed as a means of emphasis. In this passage the words “stormy and wet” and “mud” are reiterated to emphasize the wretchedness of the weather.

* …whiles you was a minor = while you were below the age of 21

** What odds…? = What does it matter…?

2. … heard the footstep stumble in coming on.

The above sentence may serve as an illustration of metonymy – one of the most significant tropes in which the name of the thing is put for that of another related to it. When the author says that Pip “heard the footstep stumble” he means that Pip heard somebody stumble on the stairs.

The use of metonymy here contributes to the atmosphere of growing suspense, for Pip’s imagination played a trick on him and he associated the sound with the footstep of his dead sister’s ghost.

3. “There is nothing the matter?”

Note the order of the words in this question. In colloquial English an interrogative sentence often has direct word order. In the majority of cases it implies the speaker’s assurance of getting an answer he expects or hopes for.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Chapter XXXIX	\|	In the instant I had seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of me.

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