Susan hill uses more than 500 words to describe the fog, but at the time she doesn’t seem to be going anywhere with it but as you read on in the story you realise that all the describing in the earlier chapters is building the basis for the story to unfold, The mist is paramount to the plot, by the time we get to the end of the book, when Arthur hears the noises that he has associated with the sinking of the pony and the trap into the marsh, we know that the mist made it so that kipps vision was impaired and therefore he could not defiantly define if the pony and trap did sink into the marsh or not, we know that the mist could obscure kipps vision almost to the point of blackness and it also distorts sounds and noises so kipps could not tell were the screaming was coming from, we know all these things because of the London fog passage.
The fog also sets the scene at the beginning of the story and is used to create a certain kind of scary and threatening atmosphere. Hill describes the London fog as “menacing and sinister”. It seems to have taken a life of its own (personification) as if it wants to hurt people. She later expects us to see the sea mist as a person. And so it isn’t surprising that hill writes about the fog in great detail. Exploiting a number of language features at her disposal. She uses all of the following Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, Personification, Imagery, repetition, I will explain these below:
Nouns – Fog was outdoors, hanging over the river, creeping in and out of alleyways and passages, swirling thickly between the bare trees of all the parks and gardens
Adjective – Yellow fog, filthy evil-smelling fog
Adverb – Groping their way blindly across roads, men and women took their lives in their hands.
Personification – Hanging, creeping, choked, blinded.
Imagery – Sulphurous yellow, red-hot pools of light
Repetition – Susan hill likes repeating a word or phrase 3 times or more for effect, e.g.
“It was a yellow fog, a filthy evil smelling fog, a fog that choked and blinded, smeared and stained.
It is very effective at creating the atmosphere that Susan hill wants because it makes it seem like the reader is in the story and is experiencing the effects of the fog and she uses imagery very well by making it seem that the London fog is “deadly”, she uses a method called personification which makes the fog seem like a person and takes the shape of a human and is almost real