Beginning with London,we learn of the ‘Implacable November weather’ which instantly composes a dismal, unforgiving atmosphere. The weather cannot be appeased, soothed or satisfied or cannot be made quiet to a state of peace.
The smoke:
“lowering down from chimney pots”
is:
“making a soft black drizzle, mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.”
Dickens implies that all life has ended due to the death of the sun. The people of London have no aspirations for the future, everything is just one big ‘repeat’. Dickens makes the contrast of the white pure snowflakes and the dirty soot. Even the smoke from the chimney pots express a gloomy existence. It seems like the city has gone back in time, London has an uncivilised nature just like the moors in ‘Great Expectations’.
Even the ‘dogs are indistinguishable in mire’. We are unable to identify the dogs similar to the lawsuit. Dickens presents London as a discouraging place to be. Everything is bleak. The lawsuit is alike an infectious disease that all of London, even non-human beings have caught. Dickens creates an extremely miserable confusing portrait of London, its people and its aspects.
We learn that:
“tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud.”
This is simply an example of the lawsuit. It has been known by many for a long time, where all sorts of people are ‘tripping one another up’, leaving their mark, in addition to the problem that already exists. We gain the impression that the sun never rises in London, every day is the same
